Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

[n2doc]

Matthew Campbell

Corinne Gretler

Nestlé is by far the largest food company in the world. Its 335,000 employees produce more than 2,000 brands, manufactured in 436 factories across 85 countries. It’s Europe’s most valuable corporation, worth $240 billion, comfortably more than oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. Among the world’s 195 nations, it sells in 189.

Nestlé’s impact on the history of how we eat is almost impossible to overstate. Sweets as we know them wouldn’t exist without Henri Nestlé, the company’s founder, who in the late 19th century supplied condensed milk for the world’s first milk chocolate, made by a neighbor in Vevey, Switzerland. Nestlé scientists created the first instant coffee, Nescafé, just in time for World War II rations. Nestlé chocolate was in the first chocolate chip cookie.

The Nestlé food and drink empire, including San Pellegrino water and Stouffer’s frozen dinners, is built on a foundation of sugar. Butterfinger, Cookie Crisp, KitKat, and Oh Henry! are all Nestlé products. So are Drumstick sundae cones, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and Nesquik chocolate milk. In 1988, Nestlé even bought the life-imitates-art candy brand that makes Laffy Taffy and Nerds: Willy Wonka.

The company’s headquarters, on Vevey’s Avenue Nestlé, is far from a psychedelic sugarscape out of Roald Dahl. The building, the biggest in town, is a high-modernist pile of aluminum and green-tinted glass that resembles an upscale hospital or a midsize intelligence agency. Up a spiral staircase of gleaming metal, offices have fairy-tale views of sparkling Lake Geneva and the mist-shrouded Alps beyond. The perspective testifies that for a century and a half, sugar has been sweet. It isn’t anymore. Sugar is joining tobacco and alcohol in the club of products in which governments have taken an interest. In March the U.K. followed Mexico in imposing a tax on sugary drinks in an effort to cut obesity. Saudi Arabia may follow. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is weighing far tougher rules for sugar labeling, and the latest edition of U.S. dietary recommendations contained the strictest guidance on sugar yet.

much more
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-05/nestl-s-sugar-empire-is-on-a-health-kick

[Atman]

1. I think I drew this back in 1999.

International Cheese & Tobacco also owned the big new Health Optimization Oganization, HOO Cares. Way ahead of it's time.

[Triana]

2. Classic Corprat Parasitism

A for-profit "healthcare" system facilitates such parasitic abuse of the masses. Big Ag, Big Food and Big Pharma and Big Insurance - especially if owned by the same megaconglomerate, feed off the human body for profit. We're just profit centers for them. Their ginuea pigs. They have pretty much free reign to both saturate our food markets with crap that makes us sick, and to saturate our healthcare market with drugs and treatments to deal with the new effects of their "food". Nestle isn't the only one doing this. It's one hell of a racket with an unlimited supply of hosts/ginuea pigs for them to feed off of for corprat profit. And of course our government does nothing to protect us from them - because by and large, they control "our" government - which TPP and all other "free trade" agreements codify into international and national law. Who protects or works for us? No one. Virtually no one. If someone comes along who might protect us over big corporations, they get the Bernie Sanders treatment. Or, the Dennis Kucinich treatment. It is seen to that they get nowhere with their "revolution" to protect the common masses. This is no mere coincidence nor is it just "badly run campaigns" or a lack of enough progressive votes or voters. It's the Corporate Owners of the World protecting themselves.

[Igel]

4. So buy neither.

It's not like nobody's ever told you that inactivity and overeating leads to being overweight, which predisposes you to Type II diabetes.

Or admit that you need a guardian to protect you from yourself because you lack the capacity to be responsible for your decisions as basic as what you put in your mouth. My mother's in that state, currently. Set her down to eat, she'll stare. Have her pick up food from her plate and put it in her mouth, anything on or the near the plate goes in. Food. Garnish. Napkins. Centerpiece.

Of course, if you're a ward you also disqualify yourself from a fairly large number of rights--if you can't make reasonable decisions as to what to put in your mouth, that pretty much means you lack the capacity to decide all sorts of issues.

Then again, the way the issue is framed is that we need protecting from "them" and that we are wards of the government.

The Russian peasants under the monarchy used to call their tsar' batya, 'father," or batyushka 'dear father' and look to him for protection. Priests are called "father" for not that dissimilar a reason.

La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose.

[arely staircase]

3. So?

Is someone forcing sugary snacks down peogle's gullet's

[appalachiablue]

5. In other words, your dentist is also your meth dealer ~ Stephen Colbert.

[MJJP21]

6. fats

Fats are more importantly linked to diabetes than sugar and in particular saturated. Secondly fats are far more dense in calories than sugar as well and no there are not "healthy fats".

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

7. Thank you, totally a fascinating read!

A little bit a the scary side tho.
It's almost as if they want to become the only provider of anything we consume for any reason.
That just can't be a good thing IMHO.