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The Bitter Truth: Nestlé still adding more sugar to baby food in SA despite previous backlash BACKLASH

Posted on by Zukiswa Zimela

Media Statement 

18 November 2025

For Immediate release

A new investigation by Swiss NGO Public Eye has exposed how global food giant Nestlé is adding sugar to baby cereals sold in South Africa, while selling sugar-free versions of the same products in Europe. This follows the scandal that broke earlier in the year where it was revealed that Nestle has a pattern of selling sugary baby food in lower-income countries, while reserving healthier product formulation for richer counterparts.   

Laboratory tests of Nestlé’s Cerelac range found that 90% of products sold across Africa contain added sugar. In South Africa, 3 in 4 Cerelac products tested included added sugar, averaging 4.9 grams per serving — more than a teaspoon — in products marketed for babies as young as six months. Some variants contained as much as 5.2 grams per serving. Equivalent products in Germany and the United Kingdom contain none.

“This is corporate hypocrisy at its worst,” said Nzama Mbalati CEO for the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA). “Nestlé knows full well that added sugar harms infants, yet continues to dump sugary products on African babies. It’s a blatant double standard that treats African children’s health as less important.”

The World Health Organization explicitly warns that baby foods should contain no added sugar, as early exposure increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases later in life. South Africa already faces one of the world’s highest childhood obesity rates — a crisis fuelled by aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods.

“South Africa has experienced a dramatic surge in overweight and obesity in children under five,” says Lori Lake, Communication and Education Specialist at the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.

Lake adds that rates nearly doubled from 13% in 2016 to 22% in 2022 – with one in four young children now overweight or obese – and this is more than four times higher than the global average. 

“So, we need to ask ourselves, if Nestle is really committed to optimal health and nutrition, then why are they continuing to add extra sugar to their infant cereal – and to what extent are they helping to fuel an epidemic of non-communicable disease in South Africa,” she explains. 

 According to Lake adding sugar to infant cereals acts like a gateway drug, helping establish a lifelong preference for sugary foods that then increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and other NCDs later in life. So, while sugar is sweet – it can leave a bitter aftertaste. She adds that multinational food corporations stand to profit, but it is South Africa’s children and families – and health care system – who will have to carry the costs – which further entrenches inequalities.

Despite acknowledging on its own South African website that high sugar intake poses serious health risks for children, Nestlé continues to promote Cerelac as a “nutritious” and “balanced” product. The company also pays local influencers to endorse Cerelac online, blurring the line between advertising and trusted nutrition advice.

We call on Nestlé South Africa and the National Department of Health to take immediate action: remove added sugar from all baby and toddler foods; enforce strong, mandatory front-of-package warning labels; and introduce strict regulations to stop misleading marketing practices targeting parents and caregivers.

Ends.

For media enquiries please contact:

Lori Lake: Communication and Education Specialist at the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town. 

lori.lake@uct.ac.za | 0825580446

Dorothy Breslin: Senior Communications Organiser at Groundwork

dorothy@groundwork.org.za | 0823193741

Zukiswa Zimela Communications Manager at HEALA

zukiswa@heala.org | 0745210652

Press Statement: HEALA CALLS ON THE FINANCE MINISTER TO TAKE THE HEALTH OF SOUTH AFICANS SERIOUSLY AHEAD OF HIS 2023 BUDGET SPEECH

Posted on by Zukiswa Zimela

Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) is calling on the Finance Minister to put people’s health ahead of industry interests when he delivers his 2023 budget speech on 22nd of February. South Africans are facing a deluge of non-communicable diseases which could be prevented if the government institutes research based fiscal and legislative policies. Our health system is significantly challenged. The South African health system faces a range of systemic and structural challenges to deliver quality and affordable health care.

It is important to clarify that many of the issues plaguing the sugar sector have little to do with the Health Promotion Levy (HPL). The challenges plaguing the sugar industries are well documented and date back to over two decades prior to the implementation of the HPL in 2018, the sugar industry was already highlighting issues of a lack of economies of scale and scope, high inputs costs (Chemicals and seeds), lack of access to markets, farming marginal and communal lands and serious governance challenges, especially in cooperatives. These were highlighted by the South African Farmers Development Association (SAFDA) to the Trade Industry and Competition Committee in 2017.

“The main issues are cheap sugar imports, climate change, floods, loadshedding and the sugar industry’s own inefficiencies, corporate governance and corruption, high labour outputs, outdated technology. The HPL cannot be the main reason for the sugar industry’s problem. It is important for Industry to begin addressing its own inefficiencies that affect jobs and stop scapegoating the HPL” says Nzama Mbalati, Programme Director at Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA).

South Africa suffers from a considerable health burden including communicable disease, violence, and injury as well as non-communicable diseases. Reducing morbidity and mortality for all South Africans requires an approach that transcends health services, where public policy addresses the broader social and economic determinants of health by designing and implementing interventions that improve people’s health more effectively than individual interventions within the health sector.

Legislative, regulatory, and fiscal policies could substantially and cost-effectively reduce the burden of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases. South Africa has successfully reduced the salt content of foods through mandatory regulation and there is evidence demonstrating that a 20 per cent tax on sugary beverages will reduce obesity.

What the sugar industry fails to mention is how much the illnesses caused by their products are costing taxpayers. Diet-related diseases are killing us. In 2017, about 47000 people died from diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Currently, an estimated twelve million South Africans suffer from diet-related diseases. It costs ZAR62 billion to treat annually, and about ZAR33 billion of that expenditure can be avoided if SA takes measures to prevent diet-related diseases.

SA cannot sit for her people to suffer from industry profit activities. Industry must accept responsibility of loss of life, rising NCD management cost, and the pain our people suffer through no

fault of theirs. The history of the South African sugar industry cast light upon deeply rooted obstacles for sugar reduction anti-obesity interventions.

This is money that could be used to fund much-needed social programmes. Let us remember that this financial burden falls on the very people whose jobs they claim have been shed by the tax, the money used to treat people with non-communicable diseases is taken from the taxpayers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet.

Research exists to show that the sugar tax has worked in reducing obesity, particularly in young people. Experts from the Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge reported that the introduction of the sugar tax was associated with an 8% relative reduction in obesity levels.

The local sugar industry has been and continues to be in steady decline. It is important for the industry to pivot and find relevance in diversifying crops and look at other uses of sugar through biofuel market.

ENDS
For more information and interviews, please contact:

Nzama Mbalati on 082 734 5414
Zukiswa Zimela on 074 521 0652