As incomes in Brazil improve, lower-income consumers eat more protein and carbohydrates, and become more likely to be overweight when making uninformed decisions about eating habits. Research confirms that a lack of information, as well as a lack of hygiene, are just as likely to cause malnutrition as a lack of food.
Against this backdrop, Nestlé Brazil developed the Nutrir food education programme to prevent both malnutrition and obesity among children and adolescents of lower-income families. Nutrir uses games to convey information about hygiene and healthy eating habits, and to date, up to 800 000 children aged 5–14 have benefited from the programme.
The growth of the Nutrir programme
| |
Children/adolescents reached |
No. of schools involved |
No. of teachers involved |
| 2001 |
70,000 |
176 |
335 |
| 2002 |
72,000 |
166 |
353 |
| 2003 |
80,000 |
329 |
658 |
| 2004 |
82,400 |
320 |
640 |
| 2005 |
92,500 |
672 |
1,476 |
| 2006 |
270,000 |
700 |
3,000 |
| 2007 |
201,000 |
700 |
2,175 |
| 2008 |
313,155 |
1,132 |
2,200 |
| 2009 |
110,179 |
352 |
938 |
| 2010 |
123,480 |
339 |
655 |
| TOTAL |
1,414,714 |
4,886 |
12,430 |
The programme is supported by three pillars:
- volunteer work, though which 1400 Nestlé volunteers dedicate 116 000 hours a year to nutritional education;
- local government partnerships (see below;)
- alliances with universities and other organisations (see below).
Government partnerships
The importance of diet and nutrition in combating non-communicable diseases and the rise of obesity has seen an increased political response at a national level. Nestlé supports a number of comprehensive nutrition plans, including over 50 years’ support for the Brazilian Government’s Programmea Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (National Feeding Programme at Public Schools). The programme, through which 34.5 million children benefited from school meals in 2008, is based on transferring resources from federal to local government, where the funds can be used more effectively. The Nutrir programme supports another goal – to establish food education as a subject within the Brazilian curriculum – by providing Nestlé technicians to train nutritionists, teachers and cooks in public schools, and providing educational materials for the classroom.
University partnerships
In 2006, Federal University of Paraíba in northeast Brazil asked Nestlé to help expand Nutrir training throughout the region. With the involvement of both lecturers and students, Nutrir has been extended to all children aged under 14 in public schools in João Pessoa, and is being rolled out to other cities in the region. Nutrir has since established other alliances with UFRN (Rio Grande do Norte University) in Natal and Univale (Universidade do Vale do Itajaí) in Santa Catarina.
Other alliances
In 2007, Nutrir established an alliance with Nipo Brasileiro Hospital, a hospital that attends mostly the low-income population in Osasco. After noticing that the majority of the children attended were undernourished or anaemic, the paediatric team began a series of lectures to educate parents about healthy meals and hygiene. The poorly educated population did not change their eating habits, so Nestlé Brazil was invited to train nurses and hospital volunteers about Nutrir and work with patients on Nutrir activities. The nutritional aspects of the children will be monitored.
Nutrir also includes two major projects on job qualifications in gastronomy and counteracting obesity. The scheme has since been extended to Mexico and Colombia, where a virtual Nutrir programme has been established.
Nutrir is part of a larger global commitment by the company, called Nestlé Healthy Kids Global Programme. The objective of the programme is to raise nutrition, health and wellness awareness among school age children around the world. Nestlé believes that education is the most powerful tool for ensuring that children understand the value of nutrition and physical activity for their health through the course of their lives.
