SWITZERLAND – Nestle SA has launched a global initiative ‘Nestlé for Healthier Kids’ that will see it develop healthier and nutritious products with an aim to help 50 million children lead healthier lives by 2030.
The engagement also includes advising families on nutrition and health while accelerating Nestle’s transformation of its food and beverage portfolio worldwide.
“Childhood is a time where life-long habits are formed. We want to help parents make healthier choices for their children.
This is why we are accelerating our efforts to support families in raising healthier kids and we call on others to join us in this endeavour,” said Mark Schneider, Nestlé CEO.
To expand its global nutrition portfolio, Nestle said it launched more than 1000 new products to meet the nutritional needs of children and provided 174 billion servings of fortified foods and beverages in 66 countries in 2017 alone.
The many launches in the health category were focused at providing more variety and addressing nutrient deficient diets for consumers that is, lack of essential micronutrients such as iron, iodine and vitamin A.
Nestlé will use its innovation capability to further enhance foods and beverages with even more fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich grains and micronutrients.
It is engaged in product reformulations with one-third of its products being reformulated every year through sugar, salt and saturated fats reduction.
Some of the its recent launches geared towards a healthier portfolio include Gerber Grabbers Strong Veggies vegetable and fruit purees, Nido organic milk powder and Nesquik Alphabet whole grain breakfast cereals with reduced sugar.
Nestle has pledged to continue building on an improved nutritional value of its products and that ‘Nestlé for Healthier Kids’ boosts this drive.
By 2020, it aims to include larger portions of vegetables, fiber-rich grains, pulses, nuts & seeds to its products, reduce sugars by 5%, salt by over10% and to reduce saturated fats in all relevant products that do not meet WHO recommendations.
Although the company has managed to reduce sugars by over 34% and salt by over 20%, it is yet to complete a commitment taken in 2014 to help consumers achieve the recommended intake of no more than 10% of calories from saturated fat, in line with globally recognised dietary guidelines.
