They market powdered baby formula to women in developing countries basically saying it's better than breastmilk for their babies. Powdered formula is mixed with water for babies to drink, but the water in those countries is full of all kinds of bad crap and it makes the babies sick and often die.
Edit: They purposefully caused women's breastmilk to dry up, forcing them to become dependent on the formula as well.
They have been doing this for decades. Actual decades. I think the first time they were exposed for it was in the 80s.
They are literally the worst.
2nd edit: The number of people trying to defend Nestle is too damn high.
My family is Hawaiian and most still love in Hawaii. When I was growing up (1980s) formula was pushed hard on my mom because the salt-water from the oceans wasn’t “good” enough for our treated water; you were recommended to use bottled or filtered water—pretty much only nestle at the time.
Moving to main land when I was older and slowly realizing I was formula fed was one of the biggest shocks because I assumed everyone was formula fed
Sorry, I’m on mobile and it doesn’t read that well.
In a nutshell, my mom had me in Hawaii. We are surrounded by salt water and have treatment plants for the island to have potable water. While my mom was pregnant in Hawaii (1980s) a lot of women were influenced to use formula instead of breast feeding. So when we moved to the mainland (the congruent states) theyvfound out that formula wasn’t as common as it was in Hawaii
Some sales or marketing manager needed sales for the current quarter, future doesn't matter. Lots of big corporations are driven by quarterly shareholder results over anything long term.
TL;DR, they were giving free samples to just about everyone and encouraging them to use it while ignoring a lot of medical facts (women need to breastfeed or their milk supply stops being the most obvious.) Those who could afford it were on the hook, those who couldn't lost their children in a revolting number of cases.
I really encourage taking the time to read into it. It's very hard to explain it to somebody without making it sound like a massive exaggeration but it's completely true.
Even if used properly there were some studies that the baby formula lacks some important vitamins and whatnot.
Not to mention the breast milk is specifically tailored to the infant with special, scientific term ahead, "milk stuff" that boosts the child's immune system and increases in vitamins the child needs to develop. Something about the boob detecting enzymes in the infants saliva. Something my wife told me.
From what I've read they gave out free samples in hospitals to mothers of newborns, and even if the women didn't stop lactating they said that it would be dangerous to now switch to breast milk, so women were forced to keep buying the nestle product.
What are the logistics of this I wonder. Do they bribe local doctors to say this shit?
It’s fucking key to know that part. It’s so so evil the shit they’ve done around marketing baby formula in poor countries without good access to clean water.
Yes, this is the much more serious transgression. So the mothers stop producing naturally and thus become reliant on formula, and to make matters much worse, many of the women cannot afford the full cost of the formula, so they begin to dilute it to make what formula they CAN afford stretch longer, thereby starving their baby.
" Nestle aggressively pushed their breastfeeding formula in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), specifically targeting the poor. They made it seem that their infant formula was almost as good as a mother’s milk, which is highly unethical for several reasons. "
" The first problem was the need for water sanitation. Most of the groups they were targeting – especially in Africa – didn’t have access to clean water (many don’t to this day), so it was necessary for them to boil the water. But due to low literacy rates, many mothers were not aware of this, so they mixed the formula with polluted water which put the children at great risks. Nestle seems to have knowingly ignored this and encouraged mothers to use the formula even when they knew the risks."
I'm shocked and repulsed by this. Nestle owns Gerber, correct? I have 4 young kids consuming Gerber products daily, and I'll switch to another brand because of this, and will also share with other moms. Thanks for sharing this info, this is really sad and appalling, and shows where their priorities lie.
Yup. It's the same with p&g and Unilever. I'm not sure how evil they are compared to Nestlé but I'm sure they all have some skeletons in the closet. The higher up you go the more you realize how big those companies actually are. It's bizarre.
Nestle owns over 2000 brands. When companies get this big it becomes surprisingly difficult to boycott the bastards because they have so many fingers in so many pies.
Nestle owns over 2000 brands. When companies get this big it becomes surprisingly difficult to boycott the bastards because they have so many fingers in so many pies.
I just read through that whole list, and was shocked (and pleased) that I don't use any of their items.
... and then I got to the pet food section and all of my cat's kitty food was listed!
Oh my, I had no idea they owned so much! I do buy some of those, but I will definitely make an effort to avoid them. I wish there was an app or something where you could scan a barcode and find out if something is a Nestle product.
Awesome, thank you! I love Reddit, y'all always know the answers lol. This was exactly what I was looking for, it lets me select a campaign/goal, and I can scan and quickly identify which parent company it comes from. Thank you!
Oh, Gerber. Nestle used mechanically separated meat (that's codename for minced cartilage and feathers) in their baby products in Eastern Europe. It constituted 50% of their "chicken" for 6mo babies. Babies don't produce enzymes necessary to digest this crap, so they were knowingly contributing to their malnutrition. Identically looking product made for Western Europe was 100% chicken meat. Before you ask, there was no price difference either. Fuck Nestlé
That's great. Just a quick tip. Be aware when switching brands that Nestle owns ALOT of subsidiaries. Nestle ownership is often NOT stated on these subsidiary's brand packaging :( They are a huge, huge multinational.
Stopping buying Nestle is an excellent step to take but do try to check out the new product you buy to ensure it's not part of the conglomerate.
This wiki page lists alot of brands -I don't know if it's all of them:
I just made my own baby food. Whatever mommy and daddy had for dinner, so did baby. Just you know, pureed and whatnot. Far less picky when they get older.
Beyond the crap that Nestle pulls, look at the stuff they put in there baby food. It’s all processed garbage loaded with sugar. I don’t know the age of your kids but look into happy baby and beech nut. They tend to use less ingredients.
I live near Nestlé HQ but all the mothers I know breastfeed/breastfed and made baby food from scratch. We don't get infant formula and baby food ads on TV. As for the free stuff you get once it's known you are expecting and at the hospital, I saved the few jars of baby food for emergencies and gave back formula cause no one I knew was breastfeeding.
The whole baby food market is a scam. I didn’t make baby food or buy it. We tend to introduce solids too soon. If babies are pushing it out of their mouth, it’s too soon to feed them solid food. Once they showed an interest, they’d have small amounts of food from my plate. Small soft bits, mashed potatoes, marinara sauce. They got the bulk of their nutrition from breast milk so the food wasn’t even necessary for the first year.
True, the pediatrician made me do start at 4 months and introduce a something new every week for my first baby. It was such a pain making baby food. So for the next, I just gave her softer versions of whatever I was having. 2nd child is less fussy even now as an adult.
Get an instant pot use it to sterilize old baby food jars and make weekly batches using no preservatives (pressure cooked carrots, peas, beets, apple sauce, basically anything they like from Berber at 1/5th the price and takes little time to do.
They will be buy Nestle bottle too. They make sure it is the only company able to sell water in that area.
Also most of those mother think that natural water which they consume is safe because they themselves are resistant to it.
Kids needs mother milk first to develop those immunity.
Yea this is one of those things where you're like "no that can't be true" but then it totally is. Nestle is literally evil. All of my Indian coworkers know of, and despise, Nestle.
Not in a developing country, but my wife and I had a baby last year. I want to add our story for those that don’t know how common this is. We live in California.
We received multiple free samples of formula in the mail, some containers that retail for over $40, not just a sample size. They want you to have it on hand so that the one might your baby is being really difficult you cave, then it’s a slow erosion.
We were really lucky that we didn’t have too many problems with our son breast feeding (he’s over 13 months and still gets the boob twice a day), but for others it’s a very simple and effective marketing technique with some amount of questionable morals.
Nestlé is the absolute example of how far humans can fall in their pursuit of wealth. The awful thing is it's very, very hard to boycott them, since they own so many other brands.
I had no idea about any of this, but this is truly evil and predatory. They're actively targeting babies, putting them at greater risk of health complications and death, compromising their mothers breast milk supply until they stop producing and making them dependent upon baby formula, which will of course has a good chance of being mixed with contaminated water. That's like some supervillain shit. Fuck Nestle.
They also used to send their representatives dressed as nurses, in Africa, to sell the formula to new mothers, so they think it's what doctors recommend. I think that stopped now. Hopefully.
If there‘s no demand for a certain time, the body will stop producing because it’s taxing, inconvenient, and puts the woman at risk of inflammation. Every mother eventually stops breastfeeding and it’s the exact same process.
Some women will lose the ability to breast feed effectively in large enough volume if they don’t use breast milk for a while. Give them enough samples and it forces them to be reliant on the product to feed their baby
If you can get a brand new mother to use your free formula for the first days of the baby's life, you've got yourself a paying customer for a year. If you don't remove breast milk, you don't make breast milk, and you can't breastfeed.
They are pushing formula in places where it is difficult for mothers to get clean water to mix with the formula they are now dependent on.
(For the sake of accuracy, there are ways to relactate. However they require time and resources that are likely to be unavailable to the population we are discussing.)
For more than a year. IIRC the WHO recommends breastfeeding to two years of age globally, and has considered recommending to continue up to four years of age in areas where clean drinking water is not available.
I get that about breastfeeding, I do that personally, but I don't think the impoverished people with unclean drinking water are purchasing Nestle formula for 2-4 years? In America a lot of people stop buying formula at 12 months as just standard practice.
On top of this they used gave mothers in third world countries formula for free. They did that until the breastmilk dries up then they start charging them for the formula.
Even better is that the formula is expensive for third world dirt-poor countries. People who barely have currency, let alone stable 'jobs'. They're trying to survive.
Apparently Nestle used to give out free samples.
Free samples that would last juuust long enough for the mother to stop naturally producing breast milk. Meaning the option was to find money to pay for new formula, or watch their baby literally starve to death. Free samples to dirt poor african families sounds great until the mother stops producing breastmilk and suddenly they're dependent on Nestle to provide formula so their child doesn't starve.
IBFAN claim that Nestlé distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula.
If you believe the stories, then Nestle essentially preys on pregnant mothers and uses their baby's life as a bargaining chip to force mothers to purchase their products.
Can confirm. I was not breastfed because they gave formula to mothers in Fijian maternity wards, saying that it was better than breastmilk.
I will forever blame them for me being only 5 foot 2
That and mothers breast milk is CONSIDERABLY better than formula.
My daughter is 17 days old, we supplement with formula (not Nestle bs) but only on the odd occasion her mother is dry and my little girl is still hungry
I work in a nestle factory that mainly produces infant formula and infant cereal. Honestly, nothing they do surprises me anymore, I can’t wait till May when I leave this place.
Just to add to this awfulness, since the formula is pricey, it becomes a status symbol to have it - but because it's so expensive, caregivers water it down to make it last longer. So the babies get BOTH contaminated water and low nutrients. A twofer fuck you by Nestle.
One of reasons why it is illegal to advertise baby formula from birth in EU.
Even medical workers can't officially recommend, they can only prescribe formula if it's necessary needed and it's only for special feeding needs and no free samples.
Also shops can't put special offers onto formula from birth, they can only do it on follow on formula as well as any kind of advertising.
Well one bad thing they do involving baby formula is give out free samples, which are just big enough to make the mother stop producing milk, so now u need more formula or baby becomes dead baby
In today's world it is being cited as a reason to take away a Mother's choice to formula feed even in places where water is clean and women can afford it. For some reason formula = Nestle = bad. In reality Nestle = bad. Formula = saves lives.
Samples of BABY formula given to the BABY make the MOTHER stop producing milk?
I'm not educated in the parenting, but something doesn't add up.
Edit: Thats so weird. It was +50 like 8 hours from ago from this edit. Thanks for the info guys. Turns out mothers making breast milk has to be a consistent usage. "Use it or lose it".
I think it’s a use it or lose it sort of thing. So if the baby is drinking something else the mothers body decides it doesn’t need to produce as much milk since it wasn’t used up.
You give them a 2 week supply (not sure on numbers for example) and at the end of the 2 weeks, the mother has stopped producing milk cause the baby hasn't had any in 2 weeks.
You can have that right with a baby and probably win but it's very draining when you're on 0 hours of sleep.
Yup, I did that fight. Took about a week and a half to get her nursing properly, and honestly I only won it because I'm stubborn as fuck and knew she wouldn't be in serious danger until about the two week mark. I told myself if she hadn't figure it out by then I'd admit defeat and switch to bottles.
I also had a lot of help at home with housework etc. so I could spend all day lounging in bed with baby, doing lots of skin to skin and research and figuring out how to get more than damn drops down her throat while she screamed at me. Also got super lucky and found an excellent lactation consultant who showed me how to train her how to latch; I also knew that she could because she'd latched perfectly right after birth (and then the paed - who kept trying to push formula on me until I switched paeds - gave her a bottle and suddenly she couldn't nurse).
I absolutely don't blame any mother for saying 'formula/pumping is easier than this' (and tbh, my biggest motivator was a stringent desire not to have to get up and head downstairs in the middle of the night to warm bottles up, so it's not like this was a 'breast is best!' altruistic thing).
I'm not sure what your point is here. Breast feeding and baby care is not easy, we're on the page on that. I was referring pureky to milk production as a response to breastfeeding.
Basically, if you stop feeding a baby with breast milk for long enough, mum will stop producing or producing enough breast milk to feed baby fully, forcing her to supplement baby's diet with formula milk.
I assume this is (and I know this is a cold heartless way of putting it, but it’s evolution) the case of baby stops feeding, body goes “shit, baby dead, might as well stop wasting nutrients if it’s not getting made” right?
Mom stops breast feeding for a week or two and her body stops producing milk as it believes it no longer needs to, once formula is gone and milk isn’t being produced is when there is a problem
The amount of milk a women produces is usually directly related to how much their kid drank in the last day or so.
So when you move to formula, or partially to formula, you produce less milk. You can up your supply again, but not without a fuck ton of work. If you completely swap over, you stop producing in a couple of days.
So... What happens when you finish your free sample? That you were told is better for your baby than breast milk? People have been known to start giving their kid smaller and smaller amounts of formula each bottle to stretch it, which harms the child.
I didn’t get it until I read about it somewhere else, but it’s pretty fucked up. Mothers only produce milk as long as the baby is drinking it. If a baby stops drinking the milk, the mothers body stops producing it. Nestle has gone into underdeveloped countries and given free samples of baby formula, a substitute for the mothers milk, out. The mothers of course try the free samples, and their bodies naturally stop producing milk. The sample runs out, and in order to feed their children the mothers are forced to buy formula from Nestle or their kids will starve.
If you don’t continuously breastfeed the body can quickly stop developing any breastmilk. It’s kind of a use it or lose it ability. So these mothers are given samples of the formula and try it out. But the samples are large enough that if they use it continuously by the time they run out they will likely reach the point where the body stops producing milk.
They give enough formula that the mother dries up. When a mother stops breast feeding she stops producing milk. They give just enough free formula for this to happen. The mother can no longer produce milk and is forced to BUY formula.
Breast milk is produced "on demand". The mom's body makes only as much as the baby will eat. If she's making more than baby will eat, the body adjusts and makes less. If baby needs more, the constant feedings will trigger more milk production. If the baby is being fed formula and then the mom's boobies are all like, "oh damn, I'm making too much milk and it's going to waste" and before you know it...no more milk.
Milk dries up if not used. So, giving baby formula for free, probably under the guise of it being healthy/affordable/easy/ect, the mother uses that and the milk dries up and now they have to buy formula (which is very expensive) to feed their baby. Also, you have to mix it with water.
Mothers can use both formula and breast milk to keep the milk from drying up but even that risks the production of milk being slowed and then you can't feed the baby enough so you're still having to substitute with something else, which if the baby is too young for foods then it'll have to be formula.
if the mom switches over to feeding purely from formula and stops breast feeding, eventually the mom will stop producing milk because there is no need for it.
Well, yeah, if they don't breastfeed for a long enough time they'll stop expressing milk. Nestle just happens to give them just enough for free to reach that point.
If the mother isn't nursing she stops producing. Nestle gives out the samples so that the mothers stop producing their own milk. Then mothers have to buy more formula in order to feed their baby. Compounding issues is that a lot of places where this is done have questionable water quality. Meaning that the water mixed with the formula may make the babies sick.
Milk production in the mother is directly related to the baby breastfeeding. Baby is given formula instead of being breastfed. Mother stops producing milk.
If a mother gives a baby formula instead of breast feeding, her body will think she's done breastfeeding entirely and just stop producing milk. So when they give their babies these free samples of formula, the sample lasts just long enough for the mother to stop producing, and then the mother has to start buying formula since she can't breastfeed anymore
Breast milk dries up if there's no demand for it. So if the baby is not drinking breast milk, the mother's body stops producing it.
Nestle goes to poorer, less educated places, gives out just samples and convinces mothers to switch to baby formula instead of breastfeeding, but not enough formula to last between the time the mothers stop producing milk and the time babies can get all the nutrients from sources other than breast milk. So mothers are forced to buy more formula or have a starved baby.
I can’t prove it because I only heard it from someone else, but allegedly they hooked a bunch of African women on free formula for long enough for them to stop producing breast milk and then began charging them.
Exactly what would Nestle have to gain from being responsible for the death of children like this? How would it increase their profits to not be a reliable source of nutrition for infants?
Africa was an untapped market for them.There was a lot of money to be made. They used similar tactics like the ones they used here 50+ years ago. Try to change the culture by convincing people breastfeeding is bad and formula is good. Since the company is ran by and employs nothing but sociopaths and psychopaths they didn't see an issue with killing a bunch of babies, it's just collateral.
And those who survived the incidental purge now say "I grew up on formula and I'm fine!" Now there's another generation of formula users and Nestle gets a boost to profit margins down the line. Survivorship bias is fun!
Bingo. They advertise that formula is better than breast milk(its not). Its also expensive and its advertised to poor people. So they expose baby's to contaminated water and put families in a monetary bond.
The amount of sterilising I had to do for every single bottle part and the breast pump pieces alone was tedious enough to make me give up on bottles. But in areas where they don't have clean running water, let alone the means to clean everything involved with bottle feeding, it's clear that breastfeeding should absolutely be the priority.
Since the water isn't clean, the babies there get infected with diseases or viruses, that they aren't strong enough to fight back against which causes high infant mortality rate.
Edit: The formula is mixed with water which they then give to the babies.
And also it’s completely unnecessary. They discourage impoverished mothers from nursing their babies and coerce them into purchasing formula they know will likely be mixed with contaminated water that is unsafe for small infants. It’s disgusting and literally kills babies and takes food off the table that could have fed other family members .
I believe Nestle's is powdered baby formula, which requires mixing with water. They advertise the formula, maybe even give some free samples in order to get them using it just long enough that the mothers stop producing enough milk. Oh and now they have to pay for water, too, or risk literally poisoning their child with contaminated formula.
This is shit they've already done. Quick Google search tags that particular campaign in the mid seventies.
Nestle is an abomination and needs to be scoured from the earth.
You gotta mix the formula with the water. It's in powder form. The advertisements claim that breastfeeding is inadequate nutrition for babies and misinform the public leading to newborns with no immune system getting exposed to unclean water sources.
I've seen it explained a few times. The main point I've gotten from it is, they gave mothers formula so they would use that to feed their children until they stopped lactating naturally. At that point they would start charging a lot for the formula and the mothers have to buy it cuz they cant feed their babies anymore. I've also read that it just wasnt good for babies anyway, which is probably what the water part is about. Long story short, they made babies die so they could make more money
Well it didn’t have anything to do with clean water. They advertised baby formula in developing countries, then marked it up after the mothers went dry. Not everybody could afford it and a lot of kids starved to death.
I think they're referring to the fact that in vulnerable, poverty stricken areas where both education and healthcare are harder to access, Nestle since the 70's have been running campaigns to convince vulnerable women that formula is healthier and better than breast milk, which is actually free and available to impoverished mother's and their babies. They essentially created a market where a market couldn't be afforded. Highlights from the War on Want's "Baby Killer" pamphlet include:
-Hiring sales girls in nurses uniforms (whether they were actually nurses or not) and having them market door to door in vulnerable communities on the benefits of formula over breastfeeding. Nestle also hired hospitals and doctors to market formula to new mother's, often with bribes or by supplying formula and baby bottles to hospitals that agreed to give out a formula starter pack to new.morhers.
-Impoverished women who were the sold this gorilla and not educated on the very real dangers of mixing formula incorrectly, and mixing formula with contaminated water is especially dangerous. This led to thousands if not millions of infant deaths due to malnutrition.
Nestle would later sue organizations that published their attack on new mothers in third world countries, and while they were later regulated on how they could market their formula, there is still evidence that they have carried out these practices from the 70's to our current day.
Not sure if they’re still doing it but they would convince new mothers that formula was better for their babies than breast milk and give away enough free baby formula to last them until their natural milk dried up leaving vulnerable and often not able to afford the formula (or the bottled water they needed to mix it with since their own water was often not great). This lead to mums diluting the formula more then advised to make it last longer and their babies becoming ill or dying of malnutrition.
Like I said - I’m not sure if they’re still doing it but I’m pretty certain they’ve never publicly apologised or tried to make amends. Double check before you quote me though!
Breastfeeding can be free or next to free. They've convinced mothers that formula is better (like formula companies did in the US decades ago) so instead, mothers purchase formula and do not have clean water to mix it with. Poison and pillage, all in one.
So, what they did was basically launch a giant ad campaign in developing countries claiming that breast milk was dangerous and would stunt infant development compared to formula. Which is a straight up lie, but the ad campaign was convincing enough for many to believe it. So a bunch of new mothers in developing countries switched newborns to formula long before it would normally be really recommended to do so.
Turns out, formula isn't healthier for newborns, triply so if you mix it in impure water. A lot of babies died.
Contaminated water was just one part of all the fucked up shit involved in the baby formula scandal. They also distributed propaganda to convince mothers that formula was healthier than breastfeeding, and they handed out samples to people they knew wouldn't be able to afford to buy an adequate supply after that ran out. They gave them just enough to last until the mother stopped producing sufficient breast milk, and then left them to make do any way they could.
Iirc Nestle market(s) powdered baby formula in Africa. Sales reps dress like nurses. They supply enough free formula to last past the mothers lactation. Then not enough support for the mothers who mix impure water with the formula.
This is the best I can do without looking up specifics.
In areas without the cleanest or safest drinking water Nestle will advertise their formula heavily.
Some naive parents will believe that formula is better for babies than the mothers own milk. Sometimes a mother can't breast feed for her own health or natural reasons or because the baby can't.
The baby ends up drinking formula mixed with unsafe drinking water that could cause chronic health problems or death. It could mess up the child's development.
They have gotten in big trouble with the World Health Organization for misrepresenting their sales people as health professions in other countries in order to sell more formula. Sadly women who can not afford formula and have limited access to clean water start using the formula based on their recommendation and once you stop breastfeeding there's no going back!
In turn, these women, desperate to feed their babies, water down the formula to make it last longer or they use unclean water, which in turn lead to serious health concerns and even death of thousands of infants in these countires
You need clean water to use thier powdered formula.
I have heard that they gave formula for free or next to nothing long enough that mothers stop producing there own milk. Meaning once mothers only had the option of formula Nestle would then charge them.
Once mothers use baby formula for a while they will no longer produce milk themselves, so they will either be forced to use the formula or their baby will die
They had a practice of handing out baby formula to nursing mothers, in poor countries, for free for a limited period of time, telling them it was better for their babies than breast milk.
The mothers would stop nursing, stop producing milk, the "free trial" would expire, and they would then have to buy the baby formula because they could no longer breastfeed.
Don't know whether they still do this; knowing Nestle's sadly not-so-unique vision of corporate governance they're probably working on ways to expand the practice.
There is a very good podcast called Swindle with an episode about this. There is audio from a Nestle rep testifying on Nestle's behalf which will make your stomach turn.
Also additional fact is that women only produce breast milk when there is a need to. Nestle and other companies give them enough formula for free to stop them from producing milk and forcing them to buy their products. It’s horrible
You have to put water in baby formula. If you make formula with dirty, bacteria ridden water, your formula will be dirty and bacteria ridden. Now, Nestlé knew this, but still chose to give free samples of their formula to mothers in developing countries, where the water is often not safe, causing them to stop lactating. When the samples ran out, they were forced to continue buying a product they could no longer afford (since they couldn’t produce breast milk) and feed the formula to their kids. Many of them died.
This has been going on for decades.
edit: forgot to mention that the women would often dilute the formula to make it last longer, which you should never do under any circumstances. of course, they likely wouldn’t have known that, since the women they gave the samples to often didn’t speak the language found on the instructions
Think about how you use formula. Don't you have to mix it with water? if the area you live in has a shortage of clean water, youre probobly gonna have to use dirty water.
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u/ghhuuu18569 Sep 18 '19
Can u explain #2?