How Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries

Whoa, in the UK they changed Coca Cola to contain "only" 11.4g carbohydrates. I think that was a response to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy of 2018. To me it tastes the same but without the stickiness that made me want to brush my teeth immediately afterwards.

I drank a couple Cokes a day for many, many years. I finally decided to quit. It took a full year before losing desire for Coke. I tried a few sips of it, and it actually tasted bad.

Switched to diet Coke, and drank that for a few more years. Then decided that was probably just as bad, and now drink sparkling water.

I no longer have any desire to drink sweetened beverages of any sort.

Being older, I decided to stop eating all ice cream, cookies, candy bars, pie, etc., about 2 months ago. This is difficult. I've tried that before, and failed.

The funny thing about Coke is that they have literally invented a version that tastes exactly the same, except it has zero calories and zero sugar. It's called Coke Zero.

We have two versions of Coke, both taste exactly the same except one kills you and one doesn't, and people will still voluntarily choose the one that kills you instead.

Looking at the ingredients of "De la Calle Tepache" it contains ERYTHRITOL, which is a sugar alcohol/artificial sweetener but does not count as "sugar" on the nutrition facts label. This is why it tastes "plenty sweet".

So similar to Coke Zero/Diet Coke.

I wonder how much sugar craving depends on age. As a child I would happily eat spoonfuls of plain sugar. Children seem much happier eating candy, etc. than adults. I wonder if sugar provides some additional value to children.

So when adults say, 'I discovered I didn't need as much sugar', maybe they, like the children, are just following their biological urges.

I did a very quick look for research on the question but didn't find anything.

Yeah, that's why my drink list contains mostly water, coffee, and tea. Trying to cut the energy drink habit, which is incredibly hard (they have 0g sugar, although for sure have artificial sugars). I'm down to about 1 per day, sometimes none at all.

When I finally manage to cut them out, I will be incredibly proud. But, man, they've made them so, so addicting.

Also... I don't know. I drink bottled water, which has microplastics, eh? There's no winning.

I would be curious to this as well if they truly made it less sweet. In the past they tried this with Coke C2 but instead swapped it with artificial sweeteners (yuck). Nowadays I only drink sparkling water and avoid added sugars like the plague. Now I find Coke way too sweet now to the point that it's enjoyable. I can't believe that when I was younger I would drink multiple cans per day.

As a sidebar, I really like British style baked beans. Trying to buy something locally made in the US with the same amount of sugar is impossible. For example, Heinz Vegetarian beans contains 31.5g! of added sugar per can. Even if you go to Whole Foods, the Amy's brand contains the same amount of sugar. The UK version only contains 12g, so I end up buying the imported beans.

I have mixed regular Coke with club soda at home, and restaurants are often willing to do this for you too if you ask.

I despise these companies for pumping sugar into everything... however, understand that street drinks in those countries are plenty sweet themselves and can be less hygienic as well --street food is also very fatty or oily. So, both local and foreign chains or brands exploit sugar and fats but so do the mom and pop or in many cases, kid street vendors. The stuff sells and costs less.

In mexico they sell horchate in plastic baggies with straws --boy, are they sweet.

There is another alternative that is getting more popular in the US, which are Olipop sodas. They are sweetened with stevia and have only 2-5g of sugar, plus a lot of added fiber.

As someone who very rarely drinks soda of any kind, I find typical Coke or Pepsi products overwhelmingly sweet and feel sick if I actually drink a whole can. I can stomach Olipop though. (No paid endorsement here, I discovered these through my partner. She is a health-obsessed person with a sweet tooth.)

The amazing thing is that 8g is still a lot.

8g of sugar is enough

8g of sugar is enough for the taste but not enough for the crack effect to take place. Coca Cola et all did plenty of research into how to get their product to sell ever higher quantities (addictive properties).

Its really not that much sugar if you’ve ever made lemonade for example

As well, the impacts of fructose and HFC.

Your taste buds adjust over time after you cut back. I used to drink a TON of soda and on the rare occasions I have one it's usually too sweet and I can't finish. There is sparkling water cola (no sugar, no sweetner) available in my area and it honestly tastes pretty close to what I remember cola tasting like at my peak soda days.

I've switched to the Ollipop brand from regular soda. The taste is great and it doesn't make me feel like garbage. I'm never looking back.

If that were true you'd expect this replicated in everywhere.

Yeah, there’s a real failure to understand that sugar and junk food while unhealthy in the long term remains the most cost effective source of calories.

Having little money doesn’t mean your kids don’t magically need fewer calories (and not providing those calories is itself a crime), so if you have an affordable source of calories that’s what you go for, even if those calories come with a side helping of excess calories (stopping hunger requires volume of food so high calorie/volume ratio results in over eating), and often huge amounts of fat as well.

I grew up dirt poor in the early 80s in NZ, and the cheapest food then was oatmeal and dried spaghetti, but by the 90s the time people were having to work and the amount being paid for that work and rent, and the super steep drop in price of McDonald’s etc (it went from being an expensive birthday treat when I was a kid to being cheaper than fish&chips) means that the diet switch was likely unavoidable.

Luckily for me by that point my parents had been able to start working, so fridge and weekly shopping was an option (bread wouldn’t go stale, we could keep meat and vegetables in a freezer), but I can’t imagine having the same outcome if my families life was shifted ten years later (much higher student loans, even less money while they were students, most non junk food being more expensive while junk food was cheaper).

I recognize 80s NZ poverty is not US poverty, but even in NZ I can’t imagine how much harder life would be for a similarly (economically) placed family is today vs for me, everything seems tailored to create obesity and struggles.

on* sugar

I'm not a Nestle fan, but I'm not sure they're evil and they're nowhere close to the most evil company. One well-documented prime example would be Krupp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arms_of_Krupp

In what sense does Nestle have a monopoly on everything you eat or drink?

So, they own a lot of packaged food brands?

Only my cat regularly consumes anything on that list.

It's depressing as hell that a company like Nestle was allowed to buy a company like Roundtree.

It's a reminder that no matter what a company's founder's principles are as soon as it goes public it's a target to have all that reversed by people with no principles at all.

At least Roundtree's foundation survives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rowntree_Foundation

Because we operate on a banlist instead of an allowlist of ingredients. Banned sugar in baby porridge? Oh, we just broke down the wheat (to simpler carbs/high insulin response)

this isn’t a nestlé specific activity? As far as I can tell this is standard behaviour from every company involved in snack foods, candy, soda, etc?

If you open the article, you might discover that this is about literal baby food for infants as young as six months, not snacks and such for [older] children.

There's some specific things they're doing, like adding sugar to infant formula and milk, that they don't do in Europe but do in lower income countries apparently. That seems like a very conscious thing targeted at very young children?

I think the point is that the offer products that cover a significant portion of the market throughout your entire life, so they are highly incentivized to act in such a way to get you to consume sugary products (theirs) as much as possible.

I haven’t seen anyone proposing reasons why these added sugars might be beneficial. Is there a counterargument? Are these countries where calories are very hard to come by, and thus they make the case that they are helping deliver those calories cheaply?

Nestle is about 0.5% of the MSCI World, the simplest is probably to buy 0.5% by value of Nestle shorts on the side?

If you have enough money for it to be worthwhile, you can essentially approach a financial advisor with exactly your needs and they will manage your money to ignore Nestlé (though check their actual qualifications and whether they're a fiduciary).

The pro of this approach: you don't have to think about or manage that task.

The cons: you'll need enough money for that to be worthwhile, you might not see as good a return as you would simply parking your money in an ETF, you will likely face higher fees than normal for active management.

You could save money by actively managing your investments yourself, but that would be quite time consuming and generally requires you to have more upfront capital to invest.

All the major ETFs are gamed. Remember the scandal a couple of years ago when Exxon was considered green and major banks were considered ethical.

BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, etc. They are all the same.

If it's worth it to you, tell your investment manager that you want to track MSCI Developed World minus Nestlé. You'll get charged a fee for a manually-managed brokerage compared to just dumping everything into an ETF, but this type of detailed preference is literally what active investment management is for.

It's also aquired taste: after enough time on a 0-added-sugar diet, you don't miss the sugar anymore.

But it's a kind of "fast attack, slow decay" thing: you get hooked in no time, but it takes ages too lose that craving for sweetness.

No doubt food companies are very aware of this. Get 'em young, and... who cares if it ruins people's health, as long as it's legal & makes nice profit.

Who is "we"? I don't eat the junk. I'd rather other people didn't either, and you probably agree, but should we force our preferences on everyone else?

clearly someone here is probably coming from a wealthy country and never had food insecurity in their vicinity.

I do not mean to give you a "woke" lesson or whatever, but the reality where I come from is that people do not have the instruction level to know that this product is harmful to the health. The child will just ask for it, and if they are lucky/hard working enough to afford it, parents will buy it.

Around here people don't buy it because some people successfully campaigned to get the stuff banned. That's all there is to it.

They're pretending that it's good for the kids and prey on the uninformed or those who can't afford better alternatives. That's unethical to me.

Germans changing their name after coming to the US used to be pretty popular.

Yes, giving sugary stuff instead of lowering the surplus margin on high quality food wolf in sheep's skin

The damning thing here is that they are trying to introduce sugar overconsumption in markets not already exposed to it. They will sell two baby food products that are labelled exactly the same, with the only difference being higher sugar content in the version sold in the 3rd world. What the science tells us is that sugar addiction at young age means sugar addiction in adulthood, which is something Nestle has plenty of products to cater towards. They are aware of rich educated markets having some degree of education to avoid giving their children sugary products (and that these markets already have plenty of adult sugar addiction), and are relying on every other market to have no option but Nestle.

Fun fact, their internal slogan was (is?)

Von der Wiege bis ins Kästle – alles Nestlé!

which roughly translates to

From the cradle to the casket - everything Nestle!