The Untold Truth Of Nestle

When it comes to massive conglomerations and corporations, Nestle is right up there at the top. They're so big that it's almost impossible to imagine: according to Forbes, they're worth around $280 billion... give or take a few billion.

When you think of Nestle, what do you think of? Candy? Nesquik? Nescafe? Childhood memories of trick-or-treating, and hoping to see all your favorite candy bars in your bag? Or, do you think of controversy? Boycotts? Some serious hate?

Any and all of the above might be pretty accurate. While Nestle has undoubtedly had a far-reaching impact on the shape of the commercial food industry, they're also highly controversial. They're definitely not all candy and sweets, and there's some seriously dark stuff in their past... and their present. And here's the thing — they own so, so much that even if you think you're doing your best to boycott them, you probably still have some of their products in your kitchen — or bathroom — right now.

The name on the company comes from Henri Nestle, and his story is one that just proves it's never too late to come up with that one brilliant idea. According to official company history, Nestle was 53 years old when he opened his infant formula company in Vevey, Switzerland. It was a small venture that turned into something very, very big, and it was by no means his first attempt.

Before his infant formula proved to be the success he'd been chasing, he's also tried developing a series of other products, including fertilizers, cement, liquefied gas, mineral water, liqueurs, and vinegar.

Success doesn't just come with a good product, it has to be a product that fills a need. Nestle developed his infant formula at a time when industrialization and urbanization were happening at a rapid pace, but infant mortality was still high. Fortunately, science and nutrition was advancing just as fast, so when Nestle partnered with doctors and nutritionists, the resulting formula was one that just worked.

According to Forbes, Nescafe is the largest division within Nestle. It's worth around $17 billion today, and the whole thing only started thanks to a very unfortunate set of circumstances.

In 1929, the chairman of Nestle was Louis Dapples, a former employee of a bank with the hefty name of Banque Francaise et Italienne pour l'Amerique du Sud. And, also in 1929, the bank had a huge problem: when the stock market crashed, it took coffee prices crashing down with it. The bank suddenly found themselves sitting on a huge amount of coffee they couldn't sell for a profit, so they reached out to Nestle and asked them if they could come up with a way to preserve the coffee, and help save their investment.

It took around four years, but Nestle chemists finally came up with a method of turning coffee into a powder that could be re-hydrated. They launched Nescafe in Switzerland in 1938, and it was in 29 more countries by 1940. The timing was fortuitous: World War II was kicking off, and people around the world were looking for a way to make sure they could keep coffee as a part of their routine. With Nestle and Nescafe supplying mainly U.S. troops with their much-needed coffee boost, demand was so great they opened several more production facilities in the next few years.

Way back in ye olden days of 2015, Nestle was on the receiving end of a complaint from the Children's Food Campaign. The complaint was centered around Nesquik, and packaging that advertised it as a "great start to the day." The problem? The high sugar content.

According to the Independent, Nestle UK was ordered to remove the claim by the Advertising Standards Authority, who ruled that the claim — along with the child-friendly design and happy bunny — gave the impression that it was a healthy addition to a daily breakfast, and that was misleading. One 200 ml serving (less than 8 ounces), after all, contained 20.3 grams of sugar, and there's no way that's anywhere near the definition of healthy. 

But, if you love your Nesquik, good news was on the horizon. In the same year, Nestle promised (via Reuters) to reduce the sugar content of Nesquik by 15 percent in the chocolate and 27 percent in the strawberry. Nutritionists were still quick to point out that it didn't make Nesquik anywhere near healthy, and yet another reduction in the sugar content of its chocolatey milk drink happened in 2017 (via MarketWatch).

In 2015, The Guardian reported on troubling findings: more than 10 years after Nestle issued a promise to end child labor in their supply chain, reports by the Fair Labor Association — commissioned by Nestle — found farms in Ivory Coast were still using child workers by the dozen.

Nestle's code of conduct — which farms are beholden to abide by — forbids the use of child labor. But it's a rule that's not well-enforced, with many children being labeled as "family workers," while others simply had their age ignored. The problem came to light in 2001, and a massive lawsuit started in 2005 that featured three plaintiffs who testified that they had been the victims of human trafficking, stolen from their homes and forced to labor away on cocoa plantations.

The outrage absolutely came, and it wasn't just Nestle that was caught up in the scandal — Hershey and Mars were also found sourcing chocolate from plantations that relied on child labor. Surely, that's the kind of thing that stops with publicity, right?

No, says The Washington Post. They visited plantations in 2019, and found child workers as young as 12, toiling away on the cocoa farms. When they asked representatives of all three companies about their promise to remove child labor from their supply chain and guarantee their chocolate wasn't harvested by young teens, one responded: "I'm not going to make those claims."

In 2018, The Guardian shared the heartbreaking story of a 6-year-old boy named Theron. For nearly a year, he was plagued by a painful rash. The reason it kept coming back? He, his family, and others living in the same Six Nations indigenous reserve just outside of Toronto had no access to drinking water. It gets worse: those in the community had no taps, no toilets, and no showers. For water for cleaning and other non-drinking uses, they made regular journeys to a public tap, five miles away. For drinking water, they had to go into town to buy bottled water.

Where does Nestle come into the story? Just a stone's throw from where people live without clean running water, Nestle pumps nearly 100,000 gallons of springwater from the nearby Erin well — a well that sits on Six Nations land.

And that's not the only place that has a serious problem with Nestle extracting water for their bottling plants. In 2019, conservationists pointed to the plight of California's Strawberry Creek as indicative of the problems Nestle was causing. Where the area was once made of a series of streams and waterfalls, many were running dry — a consequence, they said (via The Guardian) of Nestle's siphoning of 45 million gallons out of the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Nestle's water sales brought in around $4.5 billion in North America alone.

Infant formula may be a huge part of Nestle's history, but starting in the 1970s, it became one of their most controversial products. That, says Business Insider, is when Nestle found itself on the receiving end of accusations that they were specifically targeting mothers in developing countries, and selling them formula that was more expensive and less nutritious than breast milk. At the same time research was showing a baby's chance of survival increased up to six times when breastfed, Nestle was accused of pushing their formula as a bit of Westernization that was absolutely within reach. Even hospitals were accused of working with Nestle to push their formula, and those same Third World mothers began trying to stretch the formula by diluting it, oftentimes with contaminated water.

The result? Millions of babies died. 

That was decades ago, and here's the shocking thing: according to The Guardian, Nestle was still being condemned by groups like the Changing Markets Foundation for making misleading claims about its formula in 2018. They pointed to some serious inconsistencies: in South Africa, for example, sucrose was one ingredient in formula. In Brazil and Hong Kong, however, sucrose-free versions weren't just being sold, but they were being marketed as healthy... because they contained no sucrose. The practice was condemned as "especially unethical."