There’s a very big difference between a cup of lukewarm Nescafé instant coffee and a cup of freshly roasted pour-over coffee, yet the same parent company will be able to bring give you both. Nestlé has reportedly paid around $500 million for 68% of the roastery Blue Bottle. [More]
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Atari Claims Nestlé Ripped Off Classic Video Game For Kit Kat Commercial
By 8.18.17
A 2016 ad for Nestlé’s Kit Kat bars includes a video game that looks an awful lot like Breakout, the classic Atari video game co-created by Apple’s Steve Wozniak. Problem is, Atari says Nestlé didn’t get permission to make this Kit Kat-themed Breakout clone. [More]
Poland Spring Bottled Water Accused Of Being A “Colossal Fraud”
By 8.16.17
Would you be willing to shell out a few more bucks for a product marketed as “spring” water than you would for plain old groundwater? A group of consumers say in a class-action lawsuit they wouldn’t have paid a premium for Nestlé’s Poland Spring water had they been aware it allegedly doesn’t come from natural springs in Maine. [More]
Nestle Building A Special Factory To Keep Japan Supplied With Wacky Kit Kat Flavors
By 7.26.17
While here in the United States we have stunt Oreos, in Japan the oddly flavored treat of choice are Kit Kats. The candies are so popular there that Nestle is building a new factory there that will do nothing but crank out Kit Kats. [More]
Hormel Worried People Will Confuse ‘Black Label’ Beggin’ Strips With Its Real Bacon
By 5.30.17 — Updated: 6.1.17
Hormel makes bacon for human consumption, while Nestlé Purina makes bacon — or Beggin’ Strips — for dogs. The bacon and Beggin’ worlds have generally played nice with each other, but then Purina came out with “Black Label” Beggin’ Strips, which hits too close to home for Hormel. [More]
Nestlé, Mars Commit To Using Seafood That Avoids Overfishing And Human Trafficking
By 3.16.17 — Updated: 5.9.17
With brands like Fancy Feast, Friskies, Sheba, and Whiskas, Nestlé and Mars are two of the biggest producers of cat food. Both companies have faced criticism for importing seafood from Thailand, where the fishing industry has been accused of human trafficking and other rights abuses. Now the two packaged food giants say they are halting the use of a practice linked to these alleged human rights violations. [More]
Are Nestlé’s Raisinet Boxes “Recklessly” Under-Filled?
By 1.6.17
By now most Consumerist readers are familiar with the Grocery Shrink Ray, where the amount of a product in a package shrinks over time to keep the price of the product consistent without decreasing profits. Sure, that’s annoying and perhaps a bit misleading, but the Shrink Ray’s sneakier twin — slack-fill — is even worse, and now it’s the reason for a class-action seeking lawsuit against Nestlé, accusing the candy company of “recklessly” underfilling its Raisinets boxes. [More]
Nestlé Creates A New Sugar: Use Less, Get The Same Taste
By 12.2.16
For years, food and beverage companies like Pepsi Co. have tweaked their use of sugar and sweetener substitutes to find just the right mixture that aligns with consumers’ tastes and perception of a healthy lifestyle. Instead of fiddling around with different kinds of sweeteners like aspartame or Splenda, Nestlé hit the laboratory to create its own version of the crystallized ingredient. [More]
Nestle Recalls Drumstick Ice Cream Cones Due To Risk Of Listeria
By 10.10.16 — Updated: 12.1.16
It’s the end of the traditional ice cream season, but people still enjoy cones year-round, like Nestle’s Drumstick pre-made sundae cones. They’ve been recalled for a potentially serious problem: the company found Listeria bacteria in the facility where the cones are made, and has recalled some boxes of cones that may have been contaminated. [More]
The FDA Wants You To Eat Less Salt, Hopes The Food Industry Will Help With That
By 6.1.16
When it comes to salt, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agrees with the Centers for Disease Control: we’re all consuming too much sodium, and the food industry should be helping us cut back by cutting it from their products. [More]
Judge: Nestlé, Hershey Don’t Have To Put Child Slave Labor Disclosure On Chocolate Labels
By 3.31.16
While it might matter to some consumers that slave labor was involved in making that chocolate bar on the grocery store shelf, food companies like Nestlé and Hershey don’t have to disclose what kind of workers are involved in the production process on product labels, a judge ruled this week. [More]
Walmart, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé Offer 176 Truckloads Of Clean Water To Flint Schoolkids
By 1.26.16
You’ve no doubt heard about the concerns over lead-tainted water in the Michigan city of Flint. While the city and state have declared it a public-health emergency, some big businesses are stepping up with the promise of delivering millions of bottles of clean water to Flint schoolchildren through the rest of 2016. [More]
Nestle Loses High Court Bid To Trademark KitKat Shape In The UK
By 1.20.16
If you happen to hop across the pond and are looking for a chocolate treat, you might see the familiar shape of a KitKat bar — but it might not actually be a KitKat, after the high court in the United Kingdom put the kibosh on Nestle’s attempt to trademark the four-finger shape of the KitKat bar. [More]
Coca-Cola, Pepsi Once Again Fund Study Claiming Diet Soda Is Better For You Than Water
By 1.18.16
Back in 2014, the soft drink industry funded a study that, coincidentally, concluded that diet soda is better for weight loss than water. These same companies are at it again, not only providing the backing for another study extolling the virtues of diet drinks, but also — according to new reports — directly paying money to the researchers involved. [More]
1.5M Bottles Of Sweet Leaf Tea Recalled Over Glass Fragments
By 12.10.15
Some days you just don’t want water or a soda to go with your lunch, so instead you pick up a bottle of something a little sweeter. But if that something else happens to be Sweet Leaf Tea, it might contain an extra ingredient: glass fragments. [More]
Nestle Investigation Results: Yep, Your Cat’s Food May Have Been Caught By Slaves
By 11.23.15
In a series of recent lawsuits, consumers have taken issue with the treatment of workers on fishing boats from Thailand that work far out to sea. The issue got consumers’ attention after reports from non-governmental organizations and a New York Times investigative series this summer, and companies that buy and sell fish conducted their own investigations. Nestle has now concluded theirs, and admits that yep, there were vendors who severely mistreated along their supply chain. [More]
Not At All Creepy KitKat Billboards Will Give You A Massage
By 10.29.15
KitKat slogans all over the world acknowledge that the chocolate-wafer concoction is for giving people breaks. As Nestle introduces the candy in the country of Colombia, their ad concept is about taking a literal “break” at public transit stops in Bogotá. A massage break. By leaning up against a billboard. [More]
Nestle Says There’s No Place For Forced Labor In Cat Food Supply Chain
By 8.31.15
After American consumers learned about horrible working conditions and trafficked workers on some fishing vessels out of Thailand, class action lawsuits began, accusing American, European, and Thai companies of benefiting from deplorable working conditions farther up their supply chain. One of the companies accused, the Swiss conglomerate Nestle, says that “forced labor has no place in [their] supply chain” for Fancy Feast cat food. [More]
