Why Nestle Is the Worst
What is the most evil company in the world? Exxon, who depletes oil wells and poisons our atmosphere? Or Philip Morris, who continue to manufacture cigarettes even after millions of people have died from smoking them? Maybe Monsanto, who exploit the agricultural industry and alter our food to stay profitable?
Well, all of these companies are bad in some sense, but one company is worse than all of them combined: the most evil business in the world: Nestlé. Nestlé is the biggest food manufacturer in the world, with over 2,000 different brands produced in over 400 factories in 189 countries. The company makes around 100 billion dollars in sales annually from period and espresso, Coffee-Mate, Hot Pockets, Kit Kat, Crunch bars, Trader’s ice cream, Power Bars, L'Oreal, Purina. It would be difficult, if not almost impossible, for you to go through life without using one of their products.
In 1867, troubled by the high infant death rate, Henry Nestlé created baby formula, a milk-based substitute for babies who couldn't have breast milk. Nestlé had excellent intentions and never marketed its product as better than breast milk. Sadly, after his death, integrity seemed to disappear from the company. In the 1970s, cigarettes were in their heyday, largely thanks to misleading and expertly crafted advertising campaigns around them.
Nestlé took a page from big tobacco's notebook and executed a similarly deceiving campaign to push its baby formula on the masses through paid doctors and shady advertisements. Nestlé convinced much of the public that formula was better than natural breast milk—an undeniably false claim. But their deceit didn't stop there. Nestlé then hired hundreds of saleswomen in Africa and Asia, dressed them up like nurses, and sent them to local communities to profess the false benefits of baby formula to mothers all over the developing countries.
At the discretion of Nestlé, these saleswomen gave formula samples to nursing mothers that would last just long enough for the mother to stop producing milk, but not long enough to feed the baby until they could be weaned. When the formula samples ran out, mothers who were no longer able to nurse had to buy more formula from Nestlé. But since many of these women couldn't afford formula or the milk it was supposed to be mixed with, they began diluting it with water.
In areas where education, especially for women, wasn't always comprehensive, many women didn't know that the water they were giving their babies was often contaminated. Millions of infants died due to the contamination, and millions of others grew up nutritionally deficient. The best way to combat misinformation and protect yourself from corporate propaganda is through knowledge, which is why I always recommend our sponsor for today's video: brilliant.org, the best way to learn math and computer science interactively.
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Back to our story: in 1978, Nestlé executives were called before the United States Senate to explain why babies were dying after being given formula. But like most corporations, it refused to take responsibility for how mothers prepared the baby formula. They weren't totally exonerated, though; in 1981, new regulations were put in place in the United States making it illegal to compare breast milk to formula, which was Nestlé's entire marketing strategy.
Would this cause Nestlé to stop their formula crusade? Absolutely not. It simply moved the majority of their operations to Asia and Africa while women and babies in these developing countries suffered the most. Doctors worldwide were paid to give new mothers free cans of Nestlé baby formula. Often, this led to babies never developing a taste for natural breast milk—the healthier and free option. Nestlé continues to spread lies about its formula, even though the American Pediatric Association, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and others say that breast milk is always better if available.
The World Health Organization has added that eliminating baby formula globally could save the lives of around 820,000 children every year. When you stop and think about this, even for a second, it's heartbreaking that this company is still allowed to aggressively market baby formula when we know the harm it can do to babies. Of course, there are plenty of reasons that a baby wouldn't be able to feed on breast milk or that a mother wouldn't be able to provide it, so I'm definitely not saying that formula should be eliminated altogether.
But every mother has a right to make an informed choice for their baby, and Nestlé has repeatedly robbed them of that right by spreading what could be classified as misinformation on a global scale. As if deceiving mothers and harming babies wasn't enough, Nestlé has a long list of other human rights abuses in its production pipeline. The company has been exposed for buying fish for its pet food brands from businesses in Thailand using slave labor. Although Nestlé came forward and said it was taking steps to bring attention to the issue and cut ties with the offenders, it clearly didn't do its due diligence when deciding where to source its ingredients.
However, this scandal pales in comparison to the company's practices in producing one of its most prominent products: chocolate. A lot of the cocoa grown in the world comes from Africa, and to increase profit margins, Nestlé looks for opportunities to buy cheaper beans. To lower the costs of their beans, they have to reduce their labor costs drastically. They do this often by using child labor. In 2000, a report accused Nestlé of buying blood cocoa from the Ivory Coast.
The company has said it's against child labor but can't always guarantee that the cocoa sourced from certain places won't involve child labor—not quite the strong stance one might hope for from a global corporate leader. In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against the company on behalf of 3 million children. The suit alleged that the children were trafficked to the Ivory Coast, forced into slavery, and experienced abuses at the plantations that Nestlé sourced from. Again, Nestlé tried to sidestep the situation, claiming it had no idea the child labor and abuse were occurring despite the lawsuit stating that it very much did.
Was Nestlé finally going to have its comeuppance, knowingly exploiting child labor? Nope. They got off scot-free. In 2010, a district court in California dismissed the case, stating corporations can't be held liable for violating international law, and dismissed the suit despite the company's claim that it was taking steps to end the child labor involved in producing many of its food products. Not much has changed. In 2015, the Fair Labor Association investigated 260 farms in the Ivory Coast and found that 56% of their workers were under 18. 27% of them were under 15.
Nestlé doesn't care; all it cares about is profit. With 3 million tons of chocolate consumed every year, there's an enormous amount of profit on the table. When it's not exploiting kids, it's exploiting natural resources. Nestlé has made a killing by bottling tap water worldwide, often draining communities of their resources and then selling it back to them in return. Take Flint, Michigan, a city that has been experiencing a water contamination crisis for years. While Nestlé donates and sells bottled water to help the problem, the company is actually bottling clean underground water from a pump near Flint.
A similar scam is taking place in South Africa, where Nestlé bought land which prevented citizens from accessing its groundwater. Instead, Nestlé bottles the water it pumps from that land and sells it to the citizens. In Florida, the company has been accused of contributing to the depletion of spring-fed aquifers and selling the water it pumps out for profit. The same thing happens in California, which unveils a new level of exploitation, as the state suffers from extreme drought conditions. For decades, Nestlé has been pumping billions of gallons of water every year from the springs in the San Bernardino National Forest and bottling it under the well-known Arrowhead brand.
What's more frustrating is that this pumping operation is virtually free for Nestlé; it pays only $500 a year for the rights to pump the water, despite its license having expired in 1988. Taking advantage of slow and often negligent bureaucracy, Nestlé has essentially stolen water from a state in a desperate drought. In 2013, Nestlé was found to be diverting clean water away from towns in Pakistan, packaging it, and reselling it to the same people it took it from. Pakistan is considered water-scarce and has seen some of its water sources sink hundreds of feet since Nestlé's production began.
Just like in Flint, the remaining water is toxic, but unlike California, where Nestlé at least pays something for the water rights, in Pakistan, it takes the water for free. How does it get away with these water-stealing schemes? Nestlé seeks out areas in need of jobs and economic stimulation. It negotiates favorable terms with local governments or whoever controls the water rights and arrives like a job-creating hero, unbeknownst to the community.
All that glitters is not gold. Nestlé owns 27 bottled water facilities in North America alone, generating $5 billion a year. Worldwide, its water business generates around $8 billion a year. All of this brings about a pretty simple question: shouldn't water be a human right? If so, why are companies like Nestlé, that take that water away from communities in need, not considered to be breaking the law? Former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has said that the idea of water being a human right is extreme. Years later, he walked back that comment, but too little, too late, as they say.
Nestlé has also been known to engage in really aggressive business practices. In 2002, the Ethiopian government owed Nestlé $6 million. Despite the fact that the country was experiencing a terrible famine, Nestlé still demanded its money when it could have easily written it off as a loss or at the very least waited until the situation was more stable. Eventually, after mounting pressure from boycotts, Nestlé backed down.
In 2013, Nestlé was charged with an alleged conspiracy to fix the prices of chocolate in Canada, effectively eliminating economic competition. One of the worst alleged malpractices of the company is its plastic pollution. Nestlé is considered one of the worst plastic polluters in the world, second to Coca-Cola. The company's website says that it has a long-standing commitment to sustainability, but is that a realistic assessment of a company that makes more plastic packaging than we can count?
To its credit, Nestlé did inaugurate the Institute of Packaging Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland, with the aim to make all the company's packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. Similarly, after taking years of criticism for its products leading to obesity and type 2 diabetes, Nestlé is working to make formulas with reduced sugar, saturated fat, and salt. It's also promised to add more vegetables and fiber-rich ingredients, but knowing Nestlé, should we trust anything they say?
It may feel impossible to avoid the company because, in many ways, it is. But try to shop for local independent brands instead of buying packaged goods. Make an effort to prepare your own food. Choose reusable water bottles instead of plastic ones. Even just glancing at a label to see if a product is distributed by Nestlé might help you escape the company's grasp. But in the end, is the worrying worth it? That's up to you. For some, trying to avoid an evil behemoth like Nestlé feels good; for others, it feels unnecessary and futile—a drop in the ocean of the company's earnings and reach.
In the end, the fact that you know the truth is a good starting point. Because companies like Nestlé profit by relying on the public's ignorance. But there's no reason to kick ourselves when we're craving a Kit Kat at the gas station. But at least when we see bottles of Pure Life bottled water being handed out in disaster zones, we'll think twice and wonder: isn't Nestlé really the benefactor it wants us to believe it is?