Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Badvertising: Nestlé's Boost "Nutritious Energy" (2.5x the nutritious energy of Coca Cola)


First let me thank Nestlé Nutrition for sponsoring the Canadian Obesity Network's Student Meeting (and therefore 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 to 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."