Business Insider – The majority of Nestlé’s traditional food and drinks do not meet a “recognised definition of health.”
“We have made significant improvements to our products … [but] our portfolio still underperforms against external definitions of health in a landscape where regulatory pressure and consumer demands are skyrocketing.” – Nestlé
Just 37% of its consumer food and beverage products meet international health standards.
The global food company acknowledged the issue in an internal presentation seen by the Financial Times.
“Some of our categories and products will never be ‘healthy’ no matter how much we renovate,” the company said in a presentation seen by top executives at the world’s largest food conglomerate.
CEO Mark Schneider told Bloomberg in September that the company is making continued investments in the healthiness of its products, but “confectionary and chocolate address a deep human need and are going to be here to stay.”
The definition of “healthy” comes from the Australian health star rating system, which scores products on a five-star scale and is used by international researchers including the Access to Nutrition Foundation. A product must score at least 3.5 stars to be considered healthy.
Metrics like the health star system “enable consumers to make informed choices. However, they don’t capture everything,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Insider.
“About half of our sales are not covered by these systems. That includes categories such as infant nutrition, specialized health products and pet food, which follow regulated nutrition standards … ” Click here to read more.
List of Nestlé brands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overall, Nestlé — the world’s largest food company — owns over 2,000 brands in 186 countries. Below are some of the company’s better know U.S. brands.
Our take: why choose any food from a company that concedes that most of its products do not meet commonly accepted standards for health and nutrition? To quote our dad, “we can think of better things to eat.”
- California Pizza Kitchen
- Carnation
- Coffee-Mate
- Gerber
- DiGiorno Pizza
- Hercules Bars (Disney)
- Hot Pockets
- Lean Cuisine
- Lean Pockets
- Libby’s
- Nescafé
- Nespresso
- Nesquik
- Nestea
- Nestlé Drumstick
- Nestlé Ice Cream
- Nestlé Milk Chocolate
- Nestlé with Almonds
- Optifast
- Ovaltine
- Skinny Cow
- Starbucks
- Stouffer’s
- Sweet Leaf Tea
- Taster’s Choice
- Tombstone Pizza
