Nestlé prevent diseases with food?

Nestlé Group wants to prevent foodborne diseases and founds new research department.

The Swiss food manufacturer Nestlé wants to become more involved in the health sector in the future. For this purpose, networking with pharmaceutical manufacturers is to be created. The new foods are to prevent diseases such as morbid overweight (obesity), diabetes, cardiovascular problems and Alzheimer's. The group intends to make headway in the financially interesting health business.

On Monday, Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck said: "Science-based personalized health nutrition is about finding efficient and cost-effective ways to prevent and treat acute and chronic 21st century diseases." Especially for the food producer founded a new subsidiary called „Nestle Health Science“. Head of the new subsidiary is Luis Cantarell, who previously led the American division. The head of Nutrition, Richard Laube, had surprisingly resigned this summer.

For the production and development of the new products, a newly created scientific institute is to be founded, headed by former research chief of the US biotechnology company ViaCyte, Emmanuel Baetge.

However, Nestle's business model of being active in the healthcare sector is not new. The company has been operating in the health sector since the 1980s. In 2007, the Group took over the Nutrition business of the Swiss pharmaceutical company and paid a whopping 2.5 billion dollars. Novartis The newly created division will emerge from the existing HealthCare Nutrition division. In 2009, this area achieved sales of around 1.6 billion Swiss francs.

The new Institute of Health Science, which is located in the vicinity of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, wants the group in the next 10 years „Hundreds of millions“ Swiss francs available, as they said. According to Kepler analyst Jon Cox, the newly created research facility could dispel increasing doubts about such health-promoting food products. The new knowledge about the old, the influence of genes and the environment should be included in the further strategies. This should help the new products to promote "good health and a long life," as the company said.

Functional foods, as the experts call designed foods that are supposed to protect health, have been criticized again and again. For example, scientists at Leipzig University Hospital recently advised caution when it comes to foods containing herbal substitutes such as "phytoseterols". These substances are used as a substitute for animal fats and should be low in calories and especially lower in cholesterol. Such functional foods should i.a. the cardiovascular system are protected. But some people with certain genetic predispositions may be less likely to excrete vegetable fat. This increases the sterol level in the body and the risk of myocardial infarction increases. According to the results of the study, people with blood types A, B and AB are particularly affected. For this reason, the Leipzig researchers advised to be "restrained" in products with phytosterol additives. Even from the natural healing this kind of designed food gets a lot of criticism, because more is pleading for natural nutrition and food. (Sb)

Also read:
Fat substitutes harmful to health?
Dangerous substances in soft drinks

Image: Claudia Hautumm /pixelio.de.