Wwhat is the purpose of companies? Roughly speaking – because there are of course all kinds of exceptions; commercial organizations that want to produce beautiful things and make the earth more beautiful – are companies on earth to make money. If they are not immoral, then they are amoral.
In the wonderful BBC programme The Apprentice, in which a bunch of egomaniacal young entrepreneurs compete for an investment from (Lord) Alan Sugar, the show’s protagonist repeatedly explains which factors are important: costs and price. The difference between them is the margin. The price is of course difficult, because if it is too high, no one will buy your product. And so it is smart to first look at the costs: they should be as low as possible.
Now the Consumers’ Association has conducted a study that its German counterpart had previously conducted. These Germans looked at many products with an ‘improved recipe’ and found that the recipe had improved for the producer, but not for the consumer: high-quality ingredients such as nuts, meat and fruit had generally been replaced by inferior and cheaper variants full of sugar. salt, fat, flavorings, emulsifiers, flavorings and other junk.
About the author
In De Consu, Teun van de Keuken searches for the truth behind the marketing campaign every week.
Our own Consumers’ Association compared the composition of more than six hundred supermarket products with the same products five years ago. That study also found that in many cases the amount of high-quality ingredients had decreased: for example, the fish content of Albert Heijn’s gourmet treats fell from 75 percent to 55 percent, and the manufacturer of Bertolli liquid (a margarine) reduced the proportion of olive oil from 20 percent. to 7 percent and Plus now puts 6 percent of forest fruits in the forest fruit flavored syrup, compared to 19 percent previously. 60 percent of the changes involved private labels.
It’s laughable how some companies are reacting to these findings. The Consumers’ Association writes that supermarket chain Plus says that their forest fruit lemonade ‘still tastes exactly the same, because the taste is mainly determined by aroma.’ And: ‘Albert Heijn even states that his gourmets have improved because there is a thicker crispy layer around it.’ You just have to dare. This is exactly the kind of junk food that makes us overweight and sick. Companies are on earth to make money and mainly look at costs.
What Lord Sugar might also recommend to his candidates is presence. For example, Michael Mosse once described that Coca Cola has become so popular partly because it is ‘ubiquitous’. Inescapable. The more unhealthy food is offered in the environment, the more unhealthy the norm becomes. To change that norm, you have to change the environment. Our government has been doing this with tobacco for some time.
From July, supermarkets will no longer be allowed to sell cigarettes and from 2030, ‘convenience stores’ such as Ako and Primera will no longer be allowed to do so either. Then only the official tobacco shops remain. Very good. But what will Primera do now? It sets up a whole chain of tobacconists. Addiction and lung cancer do not interest the company. Amoral or perhaps immoral? They are by nature to make money.
The only party that can still monitor our health – and should do so – is the government. It can set rules for the composition of food – 80 percent of the supermarket is unhealthy – and determine how many tobacco shops there are allowed to have at all.
Tags: Companies amoral government intervenes
