Tuesday, April 1, 2014

New Position with Nestlé

Warning -- Satire -- April Fool's Post

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted a Product Research and Development position with Nestlé Foods.  Nestlé is known for its skillful application of 'neuromarketing'-- using neuroscience to enhance product development and sales-- and the company recruited me for my background in neuroscience and food reward.

As Whole Health Source readers know well, food reward has a major impact on food selection and consumption, and therefore it has huge potential as a product development strategy.  Although product development by the food industry has always relied to some extent on a basic understanding of food reward, corporations still lag far behind the cutting edge of food reward research, and they are therefore missing out on a major opportunity to drive repeat purchase and consumption behavior and increase total sale volume.  I plan to leverage science-corporate synergy to develop food product solutions that people LOVE*.

Even more exciting, Nestlé has asked me to lead a strategic partnership initiative with Coca-Cola to utilize neuromarketing to tailor beverage product development specifically for children, who have a somewhat different set of reward criteria than adults.  We're excited to develop product solutions that kids LOVE* even more than current offerings, by scientifically designing new combinations of flavors, sweeteners, and totally safe habit-forming drugs such as caffeine.

Both companies have been very responsive to my nutritional concerns about processed foods, and so we're working together to make healthier products.  Here are some of the changes we're discussing:
  • Adding vitamin C and cod liver oil to chocolate.
  • Replacing a portion (1.7%) of the sugar in beverages with stevia across the board.
  • Stealthily decreasing the portion size of beverages.  To do this, we'll increase the thickness of the plastic bottles so the exterior of the bottle is the same size, but the actual beverage content is reduced by 0.2 oz.
  • Getting these healthy snacks and beverages back into schools where kids can enjoy them!
One of the first things we discussed is getting the advertising department at Nestlé to write guest posts for Whole Health Source.  This will be a fun way for WHS readers to stay informed of current Nestlé products and what we have coming down the pipeline!

April Fools!!!!!!


* Learned Obedience Via Eating

17 comments:

  1. I admit that the blogger clip fooled me, and I stayed fooled until "joint marketing venture with Coca^2".

    At that point the .01EUR dropped.

    Sláinte

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  2. LOL. Bravo. You had me there for a second.

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  3. First one I started to fall for today. Nicely done

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  4. Hahaha. "LOVE" is my new favorite acronym.

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  5. You actually had me going there for about 2 paragraphs. Good work ;)

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  6. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Could you funnel some of your business my way? It would help keep my research on processed foods and cognition afloat in this dire funding climate. Thanks! I think my rats would LOVE it.

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  7. Related breaking news: Robert Lustig, Petro Dobromylskyj, Jane Karlsson and Gary Taubes announced a new initiative to teach skeptical, balanced analysis and presentation of science, with an emphasis on cherry picking, reductionism, bad extrapolation, observational studies and illogical techniques such as invalidly shifting the burden of proof.

    "I'm excited to set up the module on how to pick the right populations and then abuse them", said Gary Taubes. "And to make an ass of myself by berating others for doing this, even when they never did it."

    "And I look forward with bated breath to teach how to get studies published and then make statements in public about the research, statements that flatly contradict what was in the peer reviewed journal", said Lustig.

    "And for my part, I have an 80 year old observational study showing observational studies and anecdotes about a single Asian gentleman are the highest quality, most reliable form of proof. It's up to anyone who disagrees to prove otherwise," said Karlsson.

    Data about the other contributor has been omitted.

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  8. I love your April Fools posts. I'm never fooled anymore because I'm familiar with the tradition, but they're always good fun.

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  9. Haha! I was about to say no more time for the blog, how did they find you/you find them, congrats for gettin' PAID!

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  10. LOL, You had me for a short bit. Couldn't believe what I was reading until the end of the 2nd paragraph

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  11. Watch out, those Nestle folks might not have much of a sense of humor. (You only had me until the second sentence.)

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  12. Well done sir. I blame my cynicism for the fact you had me right to the end.

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  13. Bravo! But anybody who really KNOWS you got it. Still fun stuff buddy. A researcher with a sense of humor. LOVE IT!

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  14. I ALWAYS look forward to what you're going to come up with, Stephan. I think you actually fooled people the first time, because joking around is not particularly in your character set.

    But, even though people knew it was going to be a joke, you outdid yourself on this one.

    ...In other news, Matt Stone dedicated his April Fools post to me and I laughed.

    http://180degreehealth.com/newsletter-issue-5/

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  15. All kidding aside, I think Nestle needs to decide what side of the fence it's going to sit on--the company owns junk food manufacturers, produces junk food, and yet Marion shouts from the sidelines about nutrition and dietary goings-on.

    Maybe it's Marion who needs to decide--I think Nestle isn't going to kill the cash cow any time soon. It does no good to preach from the pews, only to have your own empire turn around and screw you!

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