Nestle: On April 18, Nestle India’s stock fell by almost 4%, marking the company’s largest decline in three years. The fall was caused by a Public Eye report that exposed the FMCG giant for adding sugar and honey to its top-selling baby milk and cereal products in developing nations like India but not in European markets.
The discovery sparked questions about how closely Nestle adheres to global recommendations meant to reduce obesity and chronic illnesses.
As of 11:37 am on April 18, Nestle India shares were down 3.8 percent, trading at Rs 2,449.40 on the NSE. Year-to-date, the stock has declined by 10 percent, while the benchmark Nifty 50 has risen by 2 percent.
In a collaborative investigation, the Zurich-based watchdog and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) dispatched samples of popular baby food from Nestle to a testing laboratory in Belgium across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The study scrutinized 150 products offered by the company in low and middle-income countries, encompassing top-selling brands such as Cerelac and Nido.
The testing outcomes revealed that the majority of Cerelac wheat-based cereals produced by Nestle in those regions, designed for infants aged six months and above, contained added sugar amounting to an average of 4 grams per serving, equating to a single sugar cube.
In the Philippines, the product with the highest sugar content, at 7.3 grams per serving, was identified, followed by 6.8 grams in Nigeria and 5.9 grams in Senegal. The study also revealed that in India, all 15 Cerelac baby products contained an average of nearly 3 grams of sugar per serving.
According to the study, the identical product is marketed without added sugar in Germany and the UK. However, in Ethiopia and Thailand, it contains approximately 6 grams of sugar.
Public Eye and IBFAN discovered that sugar was absent from similar products sold in Nestle’s home country of Switzerland and other prominent European markets including Germany, the UK, and France. The report labeled this as “a double standard that is unjustifiable and problematic” from both ethnic and public health perspectives.
It’s important to highlight that Nestle sold Cerelac products worth over Rs 20,000 crore in India in 2022. Experts argue that incorporating sugar, a highly addictive substance, into baby products is a perilous and unnecessary practice.
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A spokesperson for Nestlé India emphasized the nutritional excellence of their early childhood products and their commitment to utilizing top-notch ingredients. They stated that over the last 5 years, Nestle India has decreased added sugars by up to 30 percent in their range of infant cereals, varying by product variant.
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