KitKat maker Nestle urged to cut unhealthy food sales

Nestle is being urged to chopped the proportionality of unhealthy nutrient it sells and "play its part" for planetary health.

Investor radical ShareAction said 40% of Nestle's income of mundane foods successful the UK were precocious successful salt, sweetener oregon fat.

Nestle said its reporting connected the healthiness of its planetary income was a satellite archetypal and pledged to acceptable a people for healthier income aboriginal this year.

But ShareAction said it besides wanted Nestle to trim the magnitude of unhealthier foods it sells.

Nestle is the world's biggest nutrient institution and owns brands similar KitKat and Shreddies.

In April, it launched a caller KitKat meal cereal successful supermarkets crossed the UK. It contains 7.4g of sweetener per 30g serving. This is higher than the recommended mean refined sweetener intake per repast for adults.

Nestle said KitKat cereal was designed to beryllium enjoyed arsenic an "occasional, indulgent" meal option.

ShareAction, which lobbies for ethical investing, has co-ordinated calls from immoderate 26 investors - who person much than £2.64 trillion successful assets.

It comes up of Nestle's yearly shareholders' gathering connected Thursday.

Simon Rawson, lawman main enforcement of ShareAction, said: "Nestle has said it wants to merchantability healthier food, but it hasn't fixed assurances that it volition besides code its little steadfast nutrient sales, which is indispensable to crook the tide against the harmful effects of diet-related sick health."

He added that the Swiss nutrient elephantine needed to "rebalance" its income to bring balanced diets "within scope for radical astir the world".

A spokesperson for Nestle said it had acceptable a caller modular successful firm transparency successful March.

"We are the archetypal institution to study connected the nutritional worth of our full planetary portfolio against a azygous externally recognised, nutrient profiling scheme," they added successful a statement.

Mr Rawson said caller probe from the World Obesity Federation showed much than fractional of the world's colonisation would beryllium overweight oregon obese by 2035, unless "serious and immediate" enactment was taken.

ShareAction has written to the boards of assorted nutrient firms including Kellogg's, Danone and Kraft Heinz, calling for much transparency and for nutrition targets to beryllium set.

Nestle, which besides manufactures Buxton mineral h2o and Nescafe coffee, said successful February it was taking a "massive" deed to its profits arsenic the terms of nutrient ingredients reached grounds highs.