Edy's Double Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, Butterfingers, and their Swiss pedigree notwithstanding, Nestlé is not my favorite company. They drain Florida's aquifer and sell our water out of state, while we suffer water restrictions and salt-water intrusion problems. (Not that they're the only ones.) They aggressively promote their infant formula in impoverished countries, where babies especially need the benefits of breast milk, and where improperly-prepared formula can be deadly. They market sugar and chocolate to toddlers:
(I found this on the grocery shelves on a visit to Switzerland. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see it is intended for children ages one to three.)
I guess if they're criticized for selling baby formula to the poor, we shouldn't complain if they turn their marketing skills toward the rich. Still, Nestlé's attempt to bring their fabulously successful and oh-so-trendy capsule coffee system to the baby bottle set strikes me as over the top. As my Swiss informant explained: Capsule coffee machines are all the rage here and if you have a Nestlé machine you're in the top of coolness. Now you can get one for your baby, only it serves formula not coffee.
Yes! It's safe, it's foolproof, it's BabyNes!
BabyNes is the world’s first comprehensive nutrition system for infants and toddlers, and is based on Nestlé’s latest scientific achievements in baby nutrition and systems technology. With BabyNes, Nestlé builds on its unmatched expertise in baby nutrition gained over 145 years since the invention of Farine Lactée by Henri Nestlé.
Ahem. The world's first comprehensive nutrition system for infants and toddlers is actually as old as mammals....
BabyNes offers single-serve formulas for infants and young children up to the age of three years. The composition of the six consecutive formulas meets the evolving nutritional needs in the first three years of life: four formulas in the first year, and one formula for each of the following two years. The customised composition of these products is tailored to suit the growth pattern in early life and the baby’s changing nutritional needs, while taking into account the steady introduction of solid food into the infant’s diet.
The single-serve portions are sealed in capsules, used in the proprietary BabyNes machine, which recognises each capsule and prepares the bottle with precisely the right dosage and temperature, at the push of a button, in less than one minute. The BabyNes machine combines state-of-the-art technology with the utmost safety and convenience, and ensures a hygienic, quick and easy bottle preparation.
Best of all, it's supercool! (Even cooler because the demonstration is in French.)
My thoughts on this topic from about 5 years ago...
http://celebratingasimplelife.blogspot.ch/2007/06/chocolate-coated-culture-shock.html
Thanks, Monica. I've edited your comment to make the url a link.
Stracciatella cereal? Seriously? Sign me up! (But not my babies.)
Really, you gotta love the Swiss. Cheese and potatoes (or bread) is considered a complete, healthy meal, especially if served with chocolate. And yet they are as a people far healthier than Americans. Maybe the inventors of the automobile have a lot to answer for.
The demonstration is awesome! Look at how content the baby is while hungry! This has got to be a great machine. And the languid elegance of mommy's movements as she inserts the capsule, rotates the dial, presses the button - what gentle calm! what loving caresses!
Unfortunately, our babies cry when they're hungry, so we're better off with our old-fashioned, but faster, BabyBres(TM).
BabyBres(TM). Just the laugh I needed after returning home from an exhausting shopping trip. (Nothing special about it; shopping always exhausts me.)
Here, here, on the shopping. Which is why Amazon gets so much of my business.
Also using this to check the problem I was having leaving comments.
It worked. :)
Come on, they *have* to launch the product in Switzerland, being it their home country and all. Even if there is a strong movement in the educated part of the country to let some things drop (like this bottled sugar). There is also a huge part that migrated here and they don't care about those things or are not yet informed enough. How would it look if Novartis and Nestlé would launch their products only abroad?
Oddly enough, Nestlé doesn't sell their chocolate chips in Switzerland.
It's not just the Swiss who feed their babies sugar. The Japanese pharmaceutical company Otsuka sells "BeanStalk" branded baby nourishment, one of which tastes in all respects like Pocari Sweat. Sugar is the first ingredient on the list.
If you care about changing Nestlé chocolate chip availability in Switzerland, you can join the 26 brave souls who have signed the petition in the last two years.
I signed it for you, too, even though you'll continue to get a non-Nestlé chips from me when you need them. :)
