70% of Nestle’s food and beverage products are unhealthy, reveals internal document

The world’s largest food company, Nestle, has acknowledged that more than 60% of its mainstream food and drinks products do not meet a “recognized definition of health” and that “some of our categories and products will never be ‘healthy no matter how much we renovate”, the Financial Times reported.

A presentation circulated among top executives this year, seen by the Financial Times, said that only 37% of Nestle’s food and beverages by revenues, excluding products such as pet food and specialized medical nutrition, achieve a rating above 3.5 under Australia’s health star rating system.

“Within its overall food and drink portfolio, about 70% of Nestlé’s food products failed to meet that threshold, the presentation said, along with 96% of beverages — excluding pure coffee — and 99% of Nestlé’s confectionery and ice cream portfolio,” the media report noted.

Earlier, when Maggi noodles was banned back in 2015, it was reported that the ban followed after a complaint pointed out that the noodles were high in carbs and misrepresented taste-related issues such as Monosodium Glutamate. Later the ban was lifted. Besides Maggi, orange-flavoured San Pellegrino drink scored an ‘E’ which is the lowest and most unhealthy rating for a food product. Also, Nestle’s strawberry-flavoured Nesquik, Kit Kat was proved to be an unhealthy food after it’s found that it contains excessive sugar in it.

According to Reuters, Nestlé has also said that they have reduced the amount of sodium and sugars in their products by 14-15% in the past seven years, and is working towards making healthier products. The paper said this assessment applied to about half of Nestlé’s overall portfolio because categories like medical nutrition, pet food, coffee and infant formula were excluded from the analysis.