Indeed this is a problem that basically all rapidly developing countries have/will/are facing. Japan is famously struggling with their aging demographic right now, China is coming in 10-20 years, Russia is gonna have a particularly nasty time in about 30 years, Italy quite a bad one in just a decade. Plenty of emerging economies like Egypt, Philippines, and Rwanda are likely having their booms right now. At the same time many western countries have benefited greatly from immigration smoothing out their age demographic brackets since immigrants tend younger.

Here is India’s population pyramid.

There is a clear swell in the population aged around 20 years old which will be fantastic for the country in the next few decades as they will have a surplus of people in the most productive years of their lives, growing the economy massively. However, right after this glut of workers there is a rather sharp decline in population which means that once these boom time people start retiring, and therefore no longer producing economic output, they will then have to be supported by the suddenly much less numerous younger generation. Meaning there will be more people living off of the work of fewer, that won’t be comfortable.

That’s why they want more babies, to lessen the blow of an aging population.

My dude you are Dutch, if the russians make it to the Netherlands for you to shoot at then the west will already be ashes.

Nestlé isn’t the only brand of baby food available in those markets, they sit right next to products that do have that “no added sugar” label. But that healthier alternative is not what sells better, the cheaper ones do, why? Because the consumers in those markets either can’t afford the healthy food or they lack the education to know the importance of a good diet.

What products are available on a market is a reflection of the purchasing habits of the consumers in that market, and those habits are a result of the macro socioeconomic factors of the region. If Nestlé changed all their products to be “no added sugar” right now then the prices of those products would need to be bumped up slightly which would mean the consumers would shift to another brand that’s cheaper which has the same issue and hey presto nothing has changed.

Nestlés products having added sugar is not the problem it is a symptom.

So what do we do if we want to solve these big problems? Well that’s not easy, it largely depends on the governments and people of those regions, but we can help. There are charities like plan-international.org which tries to directly tackle inequality and education, but driving economic activity can also help, maybe next time you go grocery shopping you buy a Senegal peanut oil or a pack of batteries from The Philippines. These are big hard problems that won’t be easily solved, but if we are to have any chance to fixing them we need to be able to identify what the problem is, getting mad at a brand is a lot easier than recognizing the underlying issues.

This really doesn’t have much to do with Nestlé. This is about the purchasing habits of consumers in different markets as influenced by global wealth inequality, lacking education, and inadequate access to healthcare. While large corporations absolutely have certain influence on those factors, this issue of more sugar in some products is so far downstream from the real problems that it’s just a useless distraction.