A Smart Choice?

I admit to having a sweet tooth and was happy to receive a jumbo bag of Raisinets from Santa in my stocking. I have opened the bag judiciously over the last couple of weeks being careful not to consume the entire contents in one sitting. I now know the promotional copy on the bag very well. My reaction -- Nestlé is one smart marketing company!

Raisinets are billed by Nestlé as a "Deliciously Smart Choice". In other words, if you can't position Raisinets as a healthy food, then you can do the next best thing -- position the chocolate-covered-raisins as the best choice among a poor set of choices. Clever!

The packaging describes Raisinets as being made from raisins "happily raised in the lush vineyards of California. Nurtured with lots of sunshine...." And, Nestlé reminds you that "The USDA Dietary Guidelines recommend eating 2 cups of fruit everyday... and each serving of Raisinets comes from 1/2 cup of grapes... Raisinets are also a natural source of antioxidants which help maintain body health."

What Nestlé doesn't promote are the mandatory nutritional facts, which require much closer inspection of the packaging. Each serving of Raisinets contains 5 grams of artery clogging saturated fat (25% of the daily limit), 27 grams of sugar and 190 calories. The high saturated fat content in Raisinets comes from the milk chocolate. Raisins are about 60% fructose sugar because they are dried grapes. If you are hungry enough to eat the whole bag (which doesn't seem too outlandish since the bag only contains 11 ounces) you are eating 7 servings which provides 35 grams of fat, 189 grams of sugar and 1,330 calories. Just to put this in context, the average recommended daily calorie intake is only 2000 calories!

Raisinets may be a "smart choice" versus M&M's or Skittles. But the smartest choice would be to skip the candy altogether and grab a bunch of grapes instead. With grapes, you'll get an equivalent boost of antioxidants, but only half the sugar content, none of the saturated fat and about 150 calories. But, don't look to Nestlé to tell you this.

It shouldn't surprise you that Nestlé believes, "as a general rule, legislation is the most effective safeguard of responsible conduct". It says so right on their corporate website. This means that the company will push marketing to the limits of the law even if they extend beyond nutritional common sense. I'm all for life's simple pleasures -- including junk food now and then. But I don't need a savvy marketing team to try and convince me that I am making a healthy choice, when in fact I am not.