Please Change the Formula
An open letter to Nestlé
Dear Nestlé,
Good afternoon. We are writing to you about a matter of great personal and professional concern to both of us: hospital nutrition. Together, we have worked for several decades at the forefront of wellness and nutrition. Robert U. Craven is the CEO of MegaFood, a leading whole food supplement manufacturer committed to nourishing a world in nutritional crisis. Ashley Koff RD is the CEO of The Better Nutrition Program and has worked with hundreds of patients directly and behind the scenes administratively to improve nutrition in the healthcare space. Frankly, we are dismayed at the way hospital patients are being served and seek your deeper engagement with finding a solution to this problem. We think you can help, big time.
Recently, Robert’s father underwent surgery at Tampa General Hospital and Robert went to Florida to provide comfort and support. Mr. Craven’s surgery required him to be fed by a nasogastric or NG tube. Well versed in micronutrients, Robert asked about the formula his father was receiving and learned it was a Nestlé product called Isosource. This product’s list of ingredients contained corn syrup, no whole foods other than insoluble pea fiber and included a long list of isolates that wouldn’t pass for consumption even among healthy people, let alone unhealthy people or people recovering from major surgery.
Robert spent several days trying to learn from the hospital staff how what he considered “fast food” was being given to his father in his weakened state and was told only that Isosource was “optimized” to deliver a given calorie and protein count and, besides, was covered by insurance. To compound matters, his dad’s blood sugar levels began to spike and talk turned to insulin shots. Robert called “time out” and asked the staff to wait a couple of hours. They did and the drastic (and expensive) insulin option was averted. When Robert and Mr. Craven returned home, 10 cases of Isosource awaited them at their doorstep.
Decades of work on the forefront of better nutrition, including in hospital and other healthcare settings, taught Ashley that in-patient and at-home supplemental nutrition feeding needs to deliver the best quality nutrients, most easily, for their bodies to heal best. Unfortunately, at such a critical time, your products offer what we know today to be among the poorest quality ingredients — highly synthesized formulas such as Isosource — whose labels read like some of the worst fast food, junk beverages, and candy products on the market today. For too long, healthcare practitioners like Ashley have struggled to help patients source better options while decrying the sick irony that such poor quality nutrition is offered to their patients through their insurance companies and hospitals. This needs to change now.
Why we’re writing to you — and not the hospital — is that the problem lies not with hospitals and their dedicated, hard-working employees who work with the resources they are given and try to communicate the “value” to patients. The problem lies with the manufacturers who deliver a product that’s easier and cheaper to make using parts of food, or even manufactured “nutrition”, instead of whole food. Yes, insurers reward convenient and cheap, but we contend that those who manufacture these products have to do better by those whose health depends on us.
With some notable exceptions, hospitals aren’t in the business or practice of growing or sourcing and processing raw ingredients to make nutritious products. But companies such as Nestlé and your partners and subsidiaries are. And that’s why we think the answer is for Nestlé to use its considerable R&D and distribution resources to make a better blend that shows up in more hospitals.
We know that Nestle is working hard at becoming a more purpose-driven company that does the right thing, not only by its shareholders but also by the public. You’ve demonstrated this, among other ways, by jettisoning your confectioners sugar business, creating shared value with your coffee growers in developing economies, and acquiring Atrium Innovation s.
You might be happy to learn that one of the first things Robert and his father did when they got home from the hospital and discovered the cases of Isosource was to ship them straight back and go to the store and buy Garden of Life’s Raw Organic Meal (Garden of Life is an Atrium company) for in between meal nourishment. For feeding tube nutrition, they purchased and utilized Liquid Hope, which has a very different nutrient profile — made up of real, organic whole foods.
Our point is this: you’ve entered the natural products space because it represents the fastest growing segment of the U.S. food and beverage industry. Membership in this space carries, or ought to carry, a commitment not only to pursue profit but also to improve people’s lives. When you acquire new resources, such as Atrium, you also acquire the capacity to make real change. You have the perfect blend, but even more important you have the size and clout to exert pressure needed to effect change. We cordially invite you to change the formula. Be the change.
Maybe the best place to start is to join the larger conversation of which we are a part. You can do this at The Better Nutrition Program website. And we hope you’ll monitor the 2018 Farm Bill, of whose budget some 80% is spent on nutritional programs, and throw your support behind candidates who care about things like food quality and food equality. In the meantime, you’re invited to get some deeper insight into this issue in Robert and Ashley’s audio conversation.
Thank you for considering our proposal. We think you’re heading in an exciting direction.
Robert U. Craven & Ashley Koff, RD
P.S. As our letter was ready to be posted, the New York Times ran this article about hospital nutrition, written by a medical resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on March 15, 2018.
