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Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

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Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#71

Post by dasboth »

gruez wrote: post #62
dasboth wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: do you see nothing wrong with someone monetising other people's lack of self control?

Devil's advocate: why shoud they not do it? Unless every other food producer does the same, sugary foods will still be available but Nestle would lose out on the profits.

That's a good point, from a purely economics point of view it doesn't make sense to stop. Having said that, Nestle pulling out of selling sugary products entirely would dent the market hugely, but someone else would eventually fill the gap. The moral aspect is a whole other question...

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#72

Post by jensen123 »

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar.

Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most people were like me, they would read the label and refuse to buy anything that unnecessarily contained sugar. The companies doing this would lose money, and soon stop doing it. But the opposite has happened. Why?

There can only be one explanation: most consumers are dumb. However, when you read about stuff like this in the mainstream media, it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem. That "average Joe" has a low intelligence is never mentioned. Of course, the media wants as many consumers as possible, too, so calling most of their potential readers/viewers stupid is probably a bad strategy, even though it's the truth.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#73

Post by warmblood »

mhurron wrote: post #37
sledgehammers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you don't see any problem here? You said it yourself. It's not _always_ a (direct) byproduct of over consuming sugar. However, it often is.

No, diabetes is often a byproduct of choosing to over consume sugar. Nestle didn't make them diabetic, they did that to themselves. There is no direct cause and effect, producing sugary snacks does not cause diabetes. People choose to over consume to the point they develop diabetes. People's lack of self control created a market, Nestle wants to be one of the companies in that market.

There is a deep difference of power and control between the average consumer and a multinational food processing corporation. The argument of the burden being on individual responsibility you are trying to make can only be made if the consumer is not being aggressively misinformed about the limited choices of products available to them for the prices they can afford. The company in question has the resources to make their relationship with the target consumer a very asymmetrical one, and they are always positioned with more information and more leverage.

Surely if you're taking the dry, deterministic outlook on this discussion you'd take this into consideration.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#74

Post by nommm-nommm »

elthran wrote: post #51
maxaf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everywhere I travel outside of NYC the question pops up: is tap water safe to drink? New York is notoriously proud of and vocal about this local amenity. Achieving a universal standard in this area would go a long way towards putting a significant dent in the bottled water scam.

By outside of NYC do you mean just elsewhere in the USA? I didn't realize the situation was that bad in the USA, outside of places such as Flint. I'm from the UK, and this question never comes up anywhere in the country (I'm aware of the scale differences we're talking about)- if you travel anywhere, you can drink the tap water.

The water is the USA is highly regulated and safe to drink. Flint was a dramatic outlier which resulted in criminal charges for those involved.

Municipal water supply has stricter standards than bottled water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Drinking_Water_Act

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#75

Post by gurkendoktor »

piquadrat wrote: post #41
cies wrote: post #14

> Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills ...and they want to "own" the water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_pb6r8VNWk

Can we stop this "Nestlé thinks water isn't a human right" BS already? http://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/nestle... I'm far from being a fan of Nestlé, but there are better arguments against their conduct than a single quote from the CEO years ago, misquoted and out of context.

That's fascinating. I've been boycotting Nestlé for many years based on documentaries and articles in German-language media. I've just tried to dig up some English articles for the first time, but they are much harder to find.

Compare the German-language version of Nestlé criticism on water:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé#Trinkwasser

...to the English one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé#Bottled_water

There was even a documentary on German public TV recently, pretty cheesy stuff, but starting at 32:49 the journalists are interviewing local politicians in Mexico about a Nestlé selling water from local reserves:

http://www.daserste.de/information/ratgeber-service/montagsc...

So while I can't translate all this content right now, the tl;dr is that in practise, Nestlé does not seem to believe in water as a human right. Otherwise, why sell water from areas where it is already scarce?

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#77

Post by themartorana »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12
hammock wrote: post #2

It's the Wall-e Scenario. If we can find a way to continue to consume cheap, shelf-stable, nutrient-dense food; while at the same time repairing our bodies from the side effects, we can be fat blobs living and consuming and growing the economy. And whether that's unilaterally a bad thing may not be a settled question. The top 5 drugs in the US[1] are remedies for problems caused by advanced society - a statin, antaci…

I'm curious how the final to drugs you've listed are for problems caused by advanced society. I can sort of see where you may be coming from regarding asthma but not antidepressants.

Agreed, considering many advanced societies don't take nearly as many drugs as we in the US do.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#78

Post by Nagyman »

jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

A bit harsh to make a blanket statement about intelligence; people just need information which isn't being readily provided or is being drowned out with too much information. The collective actions seem counterintuitive to people paying attention, but paying attention requires time - which doesn't come easily if a swath of the population is busy with two part-time jobs and recovering with reality TV in the meantime.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#79

Post by adrianN »

aedron wrote: post #70
jld89 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"does not force or even encourage over consumption of sugar." Actually they do encourage you to eat a lot of sugar. Specially children. Their marketing campaigns are specially tailored to that objective. Just look at the cereal advertisements, most of their cereal brands have a lot of sugar in them. If that is not encouraging over consumption of sugar I don't know what is...

Marketing potentially harmful products to children should simply not be allowed. It is well-accepted that children lack the experience and power of judgement to properly evaluate marketing claims. A product sold as breakfast, that consists of 25% sugar, absolutely qualifies as harmful.

I dislike the idea of solving this via more regulation. Children don't decide what they eat, their parents do. So either the parents don't care about the health of their children (hard to believe), or they're not properly educated about healthy nutrition.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#80

Post by piquadrat »

parennoob wrote: post #64
piquadrat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop this "Nestlé thinks water isn't a human right" BS already? http://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/nestle... I'm far from being a fan of Nestlé, but there are better arguments against their conduct than a single quote from the CEO years ago, misquoted and out of context.

No one is showing the clip of what he actually said, which is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWkA-uAPXCE#t=2m10s He does absolutely say that "NGOs bang on about water being declared a human right", at the time when he is relaxed, and even bringing up some Austrian folk song about water. He says absolutely nothing about limits, or just being careful. The page you linked is a great example of corporate damage co…

That video cuts off right before Brabeck states his own view. Thanks for proving my point that his quote is often taken out of context. Here's a longer one

https://youtu.be/7iGj4GpAbTM?t=192

He states that he thinks it would be better to give water a price so that we are aware of its value, and take specific measures to provide access to water to people who can't afford it. Not the worst idea ever to fight water waste.

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