The

candy bar at the bottom of the pyramid

Should Big Food be delivered to the Amazon?
By Marc Gunther, CSRWire, July 12, 2010

Last week, Nestl, the worlds largest food company, launched a barge called Nestl At Voc a
Bordo or Nestl Takes You Onboard on an 18-day voyage up the Amazon River in Brazil. This so-
called floating supermarket will bring more than 300 well-known Nestl brands, including Ninho
(packaged milk), Maggi (soups and seasonings) and Nescaf (instant coffee) to 800,000 potential
customers in 18 cities who, who, until now, managed to get by without those products, or such
treats as Nestles Crunch, Push-Up or my childhood favorite, Babe Ruth.
In a press release, Ivan Zurita, the chief executive of Nestl Brazil, is quoted as saying:
It will be a service to the population of the Amazon, who has streets and avenues in the form of
rivers. It is a project aligned with our concept of Regionalisation, based on the different profiles of
consumers, where we deal with each region as a different area.
Not everyone is cheering. Under the headline, All Aboard for Ice Cream: Nestle Peddling Junk Food
on Amazon River to Reach Brazils Slums, Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of a
book called Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight
Back, calls this especially disgusting news and says of the Amazon dwellers:
I dont think these people are lost or have been camping out too long, theyre just living their lives.
They probably dont even realize they are missing out on Toll House, Raisinets, and Sno-Caps. But no
matter, if there are people out there so backwards to still be subsisting on food found in nature, Big
Food will find them, by land or by sea, and set them straight.
Hmm. Simons outrage seems a little over the top, as libertarian blogger Katherine Mangu-Ward
argues at The Atlantic website. Her first reaction to the Nestle story was a little different:
Neat! Its like having an ice cream truck come to your house, which must be especially exciting when
your house is in a remote fishing city in Brazil.
This is the kind of argument well be hearing more often, as growth slows in the U.S., EU and Japan
and global companies seek new customers in Brazil, China, India and the rest of the developing
world. In particular, companies are looking for ways to reconfigure their products and services to
appeal to the worlds two billion poor people. That opportunity was the focus of The Fortune at the
Bottom of the Pyramid, an influential book by C.K. Prahalad, who died earlier this year. The books
subtitle, by the way, was eradicating poverty through profits.

As it happens, Nestle provided a case study of how not to sell to the poor back in the 1970s when it
became the target of a worldwide boycott over what critics said was its unethical marketing of
infant formula. This time around, Nestle is emphasizing the nutritional value of its food; by email,
Luciane Gellerman of Nestle Brazil tells me that the products on the barge include
Ninho Integral Milk (that) contains ingredients that are essential to children during growth, such as
vitamins A and D, plus calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, carbohydrates and proteins.It is the only
line of milks with specific benefits to meet the needs of each childs stage of growth. Its
consumption should be associated with a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.Ideal, a line that
consists of dairy products enriched with iron, calcium and Vitamins A, C and DBoth products are
supplied in packaging sachets, which reduces the final price.
In the news release announcing the barge, Nestle also makes a point of saying that it employs about
7,500 resellers in Brazil, most of them urban women, who go door-to-door, selling Nestle products.
These women become in some cases the main source of funds to their families, the company says.
Of course, Nestle is providing more than fortified milk and sales jobs to the Brazilian poorit is also
introducing them to such treats as the Nestle Drumstick, the original sundae cone, (290 calories,
16 grams of fat) and, by extension, the fat-heavy, sugar-infused diet that has contributed to the
obesity epidemic here in the United States.
And yetto argue that Nestle should stay out of the Amazon or sell only healthy products there is to
say that we know better than the Brazilians whats good for them. (Presumably, they are already
getting plenty of fresh, locally grown vegetables.) People found it heartwarming when when
American GIs handed out candy bars to impoverished kids in Europe after World War II. The Chinese
love Kentucky Fried Chicken. MTV is a hit in India. And a trilogy of Swedish thrillers dominates the
best-seller list in the U.S.
Maybe we should celebrate the fact that kids in the Amazon can now enjoy a Nestle Drumstick on a
hot and humid day.