Monday, December 30, 2013

Badvertising: Nestlé Boost's "Nutritious Energy"

For the next few weeks I'm going to take some time off from blogging - but don't you fret, I've curated a collection of some of my favourite posts from 2010. Today's post explores what constitutes the "nutritious energy" of Boost.
First let me thank Nestlé Nutrition for sponsoring the Canadian Obesity Network's Student Meeting (and therefore unbeknownst to me for sponsoring my talk).

Now that the thank you is out of the way let me ask Nestlé Nutrition what they were smoking when they labelled their Boost beverage with the words, "Nutritious Energy".

I came across the bottles in a big bowl at the conference and intrigued by vague and meaningless "Nutritious Energy" billing, I had a peek at the nutrition facts panel.

The first three nutritious ingredients?

1. Water
2. Sugar
3. Corn syrup (Sugar)

The number of teaspoons of sugar per 237ml bottle?

10.25!

The calories?

240

Percentage of calories from sugar?

68%

How does it compare with Coca Cola?

2.5x the calories and 1.5x the sugar.

So if you think throwing a bit of fat, protein and some vitamins into a Coca Cola along with an extra 3.5 teaspoons of sugar would make it, "nutritious", than by all means drink Boost, but be prepared for it to potentially not taste so good - as one fellow conference goer said when I mentioned I was going to blog about it,
"And it tastes like chalky shit. Can't leave that out."