Easter is not the ideal teachable moment for the denunciation of chocolate, but a leading investment group has recently taken the opportunity to so injunct Nestlé. The Swiss chocolate conglomerate has had a tune-up from Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM), the influential guardian of some $2.7 trillion in investors’ nest eggs, because it doesn’t make enough healthy food.
If Nestlé doesn’t set more stringent health targets – less fat and sugar – the unspoken threat is that LGIM will withdraw its clients’ access to Nestlé's profits. So there.
Understandably, Nestlé has called its bluff, saying it’s well aware most of its products fall short of dietary ideals. But – as it didn’t feel the need to point out – if one invests in chocolate, there are certain unavoidable parameters. Chocolate isn’t chocolate unless it contains fat and – though some peculiar Spartans can forgo it – sugar. Without lashings of chemicals and additives – at least as unhealthy as fat and sugar – one can’t make palatable chocolate.
Equally obviously, if people want healthy food, they no more seek a Nestlé product than they do a parcel from the local fish and chip shop.
Even were Nestlé to capitulate to LGIM, the chocolate consumption dial would not necessarily reverse. Just as with carbon “leakage” – where one emitter reduces, giving less-ethical competitors the chance to grab its market – so it is with chocolate. So, this chocolate maker will continue to make chocolate profits, and leave kale, quorn and spelt profits to others.
An equally risible situation has occurred with Disney’s purchase of the rights to Jilly Cooper’s racy Rivals franchise. Disney is reportedly startled at how much how’s-your-father takes place among the equestrian toffs who people Cooper’s books and has wielded the red pen accordingly.
Like LGIM’s execs, Disney’s have spectacularly failed to do their homework. A Jilly Cooper story without sex romps would be like a Harry Potter story without magic or a Jane Austen tale without impecunious young women and haughty rich bachelors.
Whatever’s next on Disney’s shopping list? Quentin Tarantino with no biffo? A Peaky Blinders family group conference saga?
Sure, Disney has certain standards of wholesomeness. But should its sexless version of Cooper become popular, imagine the shock of viewers who eagerly turn to the source material.
The problem with editing things for some lofty idea of what’s not good for people is that, thanks to the internet and the free market, they can still get the original full-fat version. Children can still read Roald Dahl books containing disgraceful terms such as “fat” and “ugly”. Theatregoers will still attend performances of Shakespeare without box office trigger-warnings about nastiness, and will mysteriously cope with the fates of Duncan, Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet – though they might still query whether Puck wasn’t due some criminal charges for all that secret doping.
Meanwhile, the peak absurdity of Kate-spiracy – a viciously psychedelic version of a Cooper novel – has been only partially doused by the Princess of Wales’ personal statement that she’s having cancer treatment. In the backwash, the media globally have had a drubbing for supplying oxygen to this sickening minority obsession – albeit a socially fascinating one.
Times writer Matthew Syed offered a refreshing perspective, pointing out that fewer than half of the princess’s home audience is on social media, and only a small proportion of that subset actively so, with a truly tiny group of “idiots and bots” being behind the lurid bilge. He urges people to stop and think about how, rather than ignore the cyber loons, they helped fan and amplify the ludicrous content via algorithms designed to further enrich billionaire platform owners – and worst of all, left society “stupider and crueller”.
