boycot Nestle

*A caveat on this blog. I am trying my best to express myself clearly, but I am recovering from back surgery. Please forgive any ramblings.


I try my best not to do anything political on my blog. But I have been encouraged by my roomie's boycott of Nestle to do some research on the company, so I think my next few blogs will be about Nestle. I am nearly speechless by what Nestle does which is causing the deaths of millions of children in the third world yearly! How are they still in business?! Why isn't someone in jail over this?!

Here is the deal: If you are an American or a European, I am not railing about your choice to breastfeed or not. That really sin't any of my business. My business is the thousands of Afghan children who I am trying to save every year. In developing countries, breastfeeding isn't a choice, it is a necessity. I cannot tell you how many children that I have seen who are dead or dying due to the fact that their mothers didn't breastfeed. For these women, it wasn't their choice, they were tricked into giving their children formulas.

One child I wrote about earlier in my blog. Her parents did not understand that for every ounce of water they put into the bottle, they needed a scoop of formula. She was starving because they weren't feeding her enough. For another child, his mother was using well water to fill the bottle. The well water was contaminated by all sorts of bacteria and parasites. She could not afford to use the gas it takes to heat the water to boil it to kill the bacteria before adding it to the formula. I held this little 1.5 year old boy who MEASURED THE SIZE OF A 1 MONTH OLD! Thankfully he is doing better now, but it was touch and go for a while.

Nestle gives out milk in third world hospitals to women who do not know the dangers of giving formula to their children. Once the woman gets out of the hospital, their breastmilk having already dried up, the free milk dries up and they then have to buy it, and realize they cannot afford it. So besides what I mentioned above, the dirty conditions and diluting the milk too much, I have seen women giving their children watered-down sweetened condensed milk, as well as tea with sugar.

Other problems such as RSV and pneumonia show up, because these babies have not received the "inoculations" that their mother's breastmilk would normally provide to newborns.

No matter what side of the breast-feeding issue you fall on in the west, there is no question that in the third world, there is simply no other alternative for childhood nutrition (unless the mother is HIV positive, a problem that is not addressed in this blog) Please research Nestle (you can google Nestle boyott, or get on youtube and do a Nestle boycott search), and if you agree that their practices are unethical (and actually criminal) please join me in this boycott.

And, do some research on which companies that Nestle owns. Many companies have a different name, but are owned by Nestle.