“Let them eat high-fructose corn syrup!”
-Nestle Antoinette

The liberal and loving executives in charge of manufacturing wholesome Nestle foodstuffs to sustain the peasantry have reportedly been busy beavers, dumping unheard-of quantities of processed sugar into its baby feed marketed to Third World mothers.

Related: Kellogg’s CEO Encourages Cash-Strapped Peasants to Eat Cereal For Dinner

Via Public Eye (emphasis added):

“Cerelac and Nido are some of Nestlé’s best-selling baby-food brands in low- and middle-income countries… Their sales value in this category was greater than $2.5 billion in 2022.

In its own communications or via third parties, Nestlé promotes Cerelac and Nido as brands whose aim is to help children “live healthier lives”. Fortified with vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients, these products are, according to the multinational, tailored to the needs of babies and young children and help to strengthen their growth, immune system and cognitive development.

But do these infant cereals and powdered milks really offer “the best nutrition,” as Nestlé claims…

Most Cerelac and Nido products marketed in lower-income countries do contain added sugar, often at high levels…

In Senegal and South Africa, Cerelac cereals contain 6 grams of added sugar per serving*…

Manufacturers may try to get children accustomed to a certain level of sugar at a very early age, so that they prefer products high in sugar.”

*One need not have done an endocrinology residency at Mount Sinai or whatever to understand how devastating 6 grams of added sugar would be for a 10-pound baby.

Where, pray tell, are all of the vaunted, credentialed medical “experts” on the processed sugar baby-poisoning pandemic?

If one were inclined to conspiracy theory, one might surmise that feeding infants high-fructose corn syrup is nothing but gravy for the medical-industrial complex — a guaranteed lifelong customer created with every feeding!

So where would the incentive lie to intervene?

While Nestle’s baby feed might be going Genghis Khan on their vulnerable little pancreases, it’s going gangbusters for the corporation’s bottom line, which conveniently has been acquiring biomedical firms left and right for decades.

Via Nestle (emphasis added):

“Pamlab, acquired in 2013, specialises in medical food products for use under medical supervision in the nutritional management of patients with mild cognitive impairment, depression and diabetic peripheral neuropathy…

Prometheus Laboratories, acquired in 2011, specialises in diagnostics and licensed speciality pharmaceuticals in gastroenterology (GI) and oncology…

CM&D Pharma, acquired in 2011, specialises in the development of products for patients with chronic conditions like chronic kidney disease and gastrointestinal.”

That’s called solving a problem you created in the first place — the #1 marketing play in the marketer’s satanic playbook.

… A play, by the way, Nestle has run for decades with impunity, especially in the Third World where medical illiteracy in the captive populations abounds and where regulatory agencies, such as they exist at all, are bought off much cheaper than they are in the West.

Via Business Insider (emphasis added):

“The New Internationalist published an exposé on Nestlé’s marketing practices in 1973, “Babies Mean Business,” which described how the company got Third World mothers hooked on baby formula.

But it was “The Baby Killer,” a booklet published by London’s War On Want organization in 1974, that really blew the lid off the baby formula industry…

Nestlé accomplished this in three ways, said New Internationalist: 

• Creating a need where none existed. 
• Convincing consumers the products were indispensable. 
• Linking products with the most desirable and unattainable concepts—then giving a sample.”

Imagining anything more morally reprehensible than a multinational “food” corporation dumping processed sugar into baby food with no apparent nutritional justification doesn’t come easy, at least not to me.

I can conclude with nothing better than the sage words of Bill Hicks, encouraging marketers to, for once, do something good for the world by removing themselves from it.

¨There’s no rationalization for what you do, and you are Satan’s little helpers. This is not a joke… There’s no joke coming… You are Satan’s spawn… It’s the only way to save your f***ing soul. Kill yourself.¨

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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