Nestlé (thing)

Global mega-corporation which aims to corner the world market in food products. Nestlé originated as a harmless Swiss purveyor of milk and dairy products but has expanded into almost every edible item today.

Very much one of the Evil Empire style companies in the 1980s and 1990s, predominately for its huge power in the world coffee market, making it vastly more attractive for farmers in developing countries to grow coffee beans for consumption in the West rather than food crops for consumption at home, and even more so for its policy of offering free powdered milk to women of newborn babies: free that is, until their own breast milk supplies dried up. Just like any successful drug dealer, once they had a customer hooked, Nestlé then announced that prices were going up.

Today a kinder, friendlier public face of Nestlé seems to have abandoned both of these policies. After all, what's a couple of extra tens of millions of dollars profit to a company that counts its global income in billions?

Some of Nestlé's subsidiaries and trading names (note many of these are UK-specific, simply because I'm not sure which brand names are well-known elsewhere):

• The Nescafé range of instant coffees
• Coffeemate milk substitute
• Huge number of own-brand chocolate bars, including Kit-Kat, Aero, Smarties, Walnut Whip, and the entire Rowntree's product range
• Carnation evaporated milk
• A mind-boggling range of ice creams and lollies, at least across Europe
• Buitoni range of pasta and pasta sauces
• Crosse and Blackwell
• Sun-Pat peanut butter
• Gale's honey
• Shredded Wheat, Shreddies, Cheerios along with many other breakfast cereals
• Sarson's vinegar
• Herta salamis

Undoubtedly the Nestlé is far larger and wider than just these products, but it gives an idea...