Nestle’s Sugar Scandal Sends a Troubling Message to Black and Brown Parents

The multinational food company is under fire for adding sugar to baby formula sold in the Global South.

In 1977, Nestlé was at the heart of a scandal that led to mass outrage and an international boycott. A report entitled “The Baby Killer” exposed how Nestlé's products—alongside other multinational formula companies—were causing the illness and deaths of infants in developing communities around the world by promoting bottle feeding and discouraging breastfeeding. Campaigners were not happy with the company's aggressive marketing of formula milk, such as using sales reps dressed in nurses' uniforms to build trust amongst consumers.

Despite the firm being ranked by Forbes as one of the ten most reputable companies in the world in 2013, in 2024, the scandals haven’t gone away—they’ve intensified.

A report released earlier this month by Public Eye has again revealed damning evidence that the Swiss multinational corporation adds sugar to their products sold in poorer countries—controversially, they don’t add sugar to the same products sold in the Western hemisphere.

The report has detailed that 94% of Nestlé's product, Cerelac, in its major markets within Africa, Asia, and Latin America contained sugar. The wheat-based cereal aimed at infants 6 months and older was found to contain 7.3g of sugar per portion in the Philippines, 6.8g in Nigeria, and 5.9g in Senegal. In Germany and the UK, the same product contains zero added sugar.

Similarly, for its powdered milk product aimed at one-year-olds called Nido, the report found that 72% of the product sold in low and middle-income markets contained added sugar. This includes countries such as Panama (5.3g per portion), Nicaragua (4.7g per portion), and Mexico (1.8g per portion).

The discrepancies between the way predominantly white populations and predominantly Black and brown populations are being treated send a distressing message. Susana Ramírez, associate professor of public health communication at the University of California, says there’s no plausible or nutritional reason that sugar needs to be added to food for babies and young children.

“Adding sugar in foods for babies and young children contributes to their poor health as they develop, including dental cavities and obesity, both of which are incredibly difficult to change once they have set in,” she explains. “More insidiously, sugar is highly addictive, so consuming foods with added sugars in early childhood trains kids’ palates to prefer sweetened foods. This leads to lifelong preferences for such foods, exacerbating the negative health impacts of such foods.”

She says it’s clear why the industry would want to do this, as the addictive quality of sugar and the development of sweet-preferring palates ensures they will have customers for life. “They are literally hooking babies on sugar,” she says.

Sina Gallo, associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Georgia agrees, adding that consumption of added sugars [usually “empty” calorie foods] will displace calories from nutrient-dense foods. “Infants and toddlers are growing at an incredibly fast rate and need large amounts of nutrients for their growth yet have a limited stomach capacity. So, if they are consuming sugar, particularly added sugar with no nutritive value, this will affect their growth and development," says Gallo.

It’s for this reason that pediatric guidelines recommend that children two years and older consume less than 25g of added sugars per day and the latest US dietary guidelines recommend zero added sugar for those younger than age two.

Gallo further emphasizes how critical the first 1,000 days of life are. “This includes when the child is conceived until 24 months of age when deficits—including nutritional inadequacies—are associated with the development of chronic diseases in adulthood. Animal research from 2019 suggests that sugar consumption in early life may have consequences [on] cognitive function such as memory in adulthood.”

Once thought to be a problem only for high-income countries, obesity and related co-morbidities are now a growing problem for low and middle-income countries. Even for children under 5, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a significant increase of over 20% in the last couple of decades and the problem is greater for countries in Asia. It is becoming common to see both undernutrition and obesity co-existing in these countries.

"Food and diet are intricately related to culture as well as to health. To the extent that colonization by the food industry is destroying traditional ways of eating, I would call this food racism."

Susana Ramírez

In Nestlé’s response to the Public Eye report, they state that the availability of local ingredients could explain different offerings in these countries. Gallo explains that different countries will also have cultural food preferences and this will likely be considered by Nestlé in their food development process. “However, children all have the same nutritional needs for their growth and development,” she stresses. “It is the availability which differs and hence why children in lower-income countries will be more vulnerable to inadequate nutrition.”

Ramírez’s concerns lie in the ethics of Nestlé’s practice. “Food and diet are intricately related to culture as well as to health. To the extent that colonization by the food industry is destroying traditional ways of eating, I would call this food racism," she says.

“This scandal sheds light on the importance of the Global South for the food and beverage industry given increasingly health-focused Western consumers who are wary of sugar after decades of rising rates of diet-related disease. The industrialized West is well saturated with processed foods, and we have been dealing with the health implications of such for a long time,” she says.

“Consumers in the industrialized West benefit from policies regulating the content, labeling, and marketing of food products in addition to educational policies intended to raise awareness of the dangers of added sugars,” she continues. “Thus, to keep growing, the food industry needs to expand its consumer base, and the Global South is where [it] can grow. Governments in the industrialized West where these corporations are based could play a role in mitigating the negative effects of these products by regulating more closely how these companies operate.”

Ramírez further comments that this is an impossible and unfair position for families. “Very effective marketing campaigns convince families that expensive formulas are necessary for their children to be healthy," she says. "Families trust their regulatory bodies to ensure that their food supply is safe and healthy. Yet these bodies, by allowing the food industry to add an addictive and unnecessary nutrient in the foods, are failing the most vulnerable in society.”

She suggests that the onus should be on regulators and advocates to ensure that families are able to feed their children healthfully. “There should be strict standards regarding the composition of foods made specifically for children. There should also be strict regulation of the marketing of such foods," says Ramírez

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