The Nestle way to consumer wellness

The steady rise in deaths related to degenerative illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in our country during the past few years have helped Filipinos realize the importance of adopting habits that will help them avert diseases and improve their overall health. Fact is, the Pinoys of today have been increasingly committing themselves to shift to a healthier diet and lifestyle and start engaging in a regular physical activity for fitness, both reflecting the desire to "look good and feel good" – a concept now commonly referred to as "wellness."

"The typical Pinoy would like to look good in order to feel good about themselves," said Liza Yap, Corporate Wellness Manager of Nestle Philippines, quoting from a company-initiated study they did recently.

Being uniquely Pinoy, Yap added that Nestle also found out that people show a marked preference for food that are not just nutritious but delicious, too.

The search also showed that Filipinos are conscious enough of their well being to engage in "some form of physical activity" which ranges from a sport or regular gym workout.

With all this insight in mind, Nestle Philippines came up with a campaign to make available food products and programs that promote wellness among its consumers and employees alike.

Since early last year, the company took a proactive approach in addressing the wellness of its employees and never looked back.

Being a company known for delicious and nutritious food like Nesvita Pro-Heart and Nesvita Pro-Digestion, nearly every employee of Nestle Philippines is knowledgeable enough of healthy living options they can take but most just won’t. Even their well-equipped in-house health facilities at the workplace seem just not enough to goad them to take up more active and healthier lifestyles.

The vigorous internal campaign to promote wellness, however, vanished the employees’ inertia.

The in-house campaign marked the beginning of what eventually turned out to be a vibrant change in the employees’ lifestyle as well as the company’s corporate culture. Now everyone’s minding the calories they take every meal (with a little help from the canteen keeper who keeps tab of the calorie count of each dish per serving), and the gym attendance substantially increased among others.

The company’s internal success with the campaign inspired them to take it one step further and engaged the public in a "Let’s Talk Wellness with Nestle" series. "It’s quite a unique program but one that we feel would make a lot of difference," said Yap, "and judging from positive response we got from people who took part in some of the initial activities we took the "Let’s Talk Wellness with Nestle via the first Philippine Summit on Health and Nutrition, I would say we are definitely on the right track."

Taking it another step further, Nestle came up with new Nesvita products that specially address the wellness needs of health-conscious adults. They are namely, Nesvita Pro-Heart and Nesvita Pro-Digestion. Both are low-fat milk products intended for adults with different nutritional requirements, Nesvita Pro-heart is the first known adult milk that lowers cholesterol. It contains Acticol, a clinically-proven, cholesterol-reducing agent that comes from plant sterols.

Nesvita Pro-Digestion has Actifibras, natural soluble dietary fibers that help smoothen digestion. Both can be taken hot or cold and are available in 25g stick pack and 180g pack.

To make it easy for their consumers to know the nutritional benefit of their products, Nestle Philippines posted them on every product label. The idea was to highlight something good to know and good to remember about each product.

"Now that we are done with the initial stages of this campaign, we hope to push through with something really big beginning next year," said Yap.

For Nestle Philippine, wellness is indeed more than just a top priority. It is a long-term commitment borne of the company’s desire to respond to the health needs of its consumers.