"Makes babies addicted"

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Nestlé milk powder in a Chinese store(Bild: AFP)

The Swiss food company Nestlé is being criticized for sugar in its baby food. According to an analysis by the Swiss organization Public Eye, the company adds sugar to milk powder, for example, in some countries.

Developing and emerging countries are affected, while Western countries are not. "Nestlé is making babies and young children in lower-income countries addicted to sugar," says the report, which was published one day before the Nestlé shareholders' general meeting on Thursday.

Call for an end to "double standards"
Public Eye, which campaigns for the observance of human rights by companies based in Switzerland, called on Nestlé on Wednesday to put an end to "double standards". Nestlé did not dispute the results of the laboratory analyses when asked.

A Nestlé employee analyzing baby products(Bild: APA/AFP/Fabrice COFFRINI)

According to the analyses carried out by Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) in a Belgian laboratory, samples of certain follow-on milk products for infants from Germany, France and the UK contained no added sugar. However, samples from countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Ethiopia and Thailand were found to contain between 1.6 and 6.0 grams of added sugar per portion. In the worst case, this corresponds to more than one sugar cube weighing four grams. The laboratory also found a lot of sugar in cereal products for babies, in this case also in European products.

Nestlé is working on reducing added sugar
Nestlé commented: "We continue to develop and reformulate our infant cereals to further reduce added sugars without compromising on quality, safety and taste. In some countries in Europe, there are products without added sugar, in addition to the traditional products with added sugar."