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Affordable nutrition
Access to adequate food and a nutritious diet is a fundamental human right.
However, it is estimated that 840 million people regularly go to bed hungry and three billion cannot afford a healthy, nutritious diet. Creating a fair, global food system means making sure that everyone, everywhere can access nutritious food.
In a world where one-third of all people are affected by some form of malnutrition and where climate change is exacerbating poverty, Nestlé is passionate about making better nutrition affordable.
We aim to provide accessible and affordable nutrition to lower-income consumers with a focus on emerging countries. By leveraging our global footprint and expertise along the value chain, including in R&D, we can offer a wide range of products and services. These are designed to cater affordably to local consumer nutritional needs, tastes and formats, while delivering on our environmental targets.
Our progress toward eradicating malnutrition
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Ensuring priority products are affordable
Our Affordable Nutrition Guidelines help ensure that lower-income consumers in emerging economies can afford nutrient-rich food. We fortify many of our affordable nutrition products with micronutrients such as vitamins, iron, iodine and zinc, helping to close nutrient gaps.
Our efforts to innovate our fortified products are continuous. In one example of this work, we launched Bunyad Iron+ in Pakistan, where one in two children are iron deficient. Bunyad Iron+ is an affordable dairy-based drink fortified with a new source of iron that is three times better absorbed by the body compared with existing sources.
In India, 70% of households consume Maggi noodles, which are fortified with 15% of the recommended daily iron requirements. We are also working to help increase whole grain consumption.
Improving access to nutrition and expertise
To enhance and share knowledge about nutrition, we partner with governments, universities and civil society organizations to create educational and social media campaigns. These are designed to improve families’ understanding of nutrition and to increase the uptake of the big four micronutrients: iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc.
We are helping teachers educate children about good nutrition and active lifestyles through our school programs, and we are creating webinars and podcasts to engage adults.
As of July 1 2023, we will raise the age of our Marketing Communication to Children Policy from 13 to 16 years old. Our stringent policy prohibits direct advertising of confectionery and ice-cream as well as water-based beverages with added sugars to children below 16 years of age. It also reaffirms the ban on product marketing communication targeting children between 0 and 6 years of age. This standard will be applied to TV and online platforms, including social media and gaming platforms with greater than 25% of their audience under 16 years old. Additionally, Nestlé will not collect data of minors and only partner with social media influencers over the age of 18. Nestlé is one of the first food and beverage companies to voluntarily adopt such strict standards.
Inspiring people to enjoy balanced diets
MyMenuIQ is now available via 30 websites and measures the nutritional balance of a meal on a scale from 0 to 100 to help people combine foods for nutritional balance.
In the Philippines, our nutrition experts worked with the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) to create an interactive online tool, the Tibay Calculator. The calculator offers parents valuable feedback on the nutritional value and diversity of their children's diet. The tool is expected to be used to offer feedback on the diets of more than 500 000 children, in turn, supporting their nutrition.
In Pakistan, where one in two children suffer from iron deficiency, our teams rolled out the Iron Calculator. This assesses dietary intake data to help educate parents about what to include in their children's diet to boost their iron levels.
Educational initiatives such as Nestlé for Healthier Kids help spread awareness and share knowledge about the importance of nutrition and healthy eating.
We work with social media influencers to inspire kids in the kitchen and use storytelling techniques to encourage them to eat more vegetables, using ingredients as characters. We help make drinking water more fun by showing how to infuse it with fruits.
In Central and West Africa, we run our Live Strong with Iron campaign that promotes iron-rich foods.
In our pursuit of taste and balance, part of improving the balance is via micronutrient fortification. We need to continue to drive our fortification efforts at scale with a focus on the Big 4 micronutrients. Through innovations, we also address nutritional gaps like proteins and fibers.
