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Sugar by any other name would still taste as sweet, but it might get you sued
By adamg on Sat, 09/13/2014 - 10:39am
A Boston man who used to drink Blue Diamond Growers’ Almond Breeze Shelf Stable Chocolate Almond Milk says he was shocked into suing when he discovered that what Blue Diamond called "evaporated cane juice" was, in fact, processed sugar, and that the allegedly "all natural" product also contained potassium citrate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D-2 and Vitamin D-Alpha-Tocopherol.
Casley Vass is seeking to become lead plaintiff in a federal class-action lawsuit against Blue Diamond. He says he never would have bought the chocolate almond milk if he had known he'd be swigging down sugar instead of the healthier sounding "evaporated cane juice," let alone all that other stuff.
In his suit, filed this week in US District Court in Boston, Vass says the product labeling violates both federal and Massachusetts food labeling laws, and that surely a large producer like Blue Diamond would know about a 2009 FDA missive warning food producers against just such misleading practices when it comes to "evaporated cane juice."
A reasonable consumer would expect that when Defendant labels its products as “all natural,” the products’ ingredients are “natural” as defined by the State of Massachusetts and the federal government and its agencies. A reasonable consumer would also expect that when Defendant labels its products as “all natural” the products’ ingredients are “natural” under the common use of that word. A reasonable consumer would understand that such “all natural” products do not contain synthetic, artificial, or excessively processed ingredients. ...
Under FDA regulations and Massachusetts law, the common or usual name for sucrose is “sugar,” not “juice.” Defendant’s sole motivation for labeling the sugar in its almond milk products as “evaporated cane juice” is to increase sales by deceiving consumers into believing that they are purchasing a healthier product.
Vass is seeking at least $5 million in damages, plus penalties and lawyers' fees.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Vass complaint | 4.09 MB |
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Comments
When did ignorance become actionable?
"I'm ignorant. Please pay me for failing to understand your words."
Whatever you do...
...please don't tell her about preservatives. Maybe she wants mold in her drink a half day after it's manufactured.
Actually ...
That would be called kombucha, amirite?
And, actually, there are ways to keep things from molding without adding biocidal substances. My great granmother taught me this thing called "canning", where you make things really hot and then seal them up. Pasteurization works, too.
Ignorant? Or decieved?
The excerpt above says that both FDA regulations and Massachusetts law say you shouldn't call something natural that contains synthetic ingredients and you can't call processed sucrose "juice".
Assuming that this is accurate then she wasn't ignorant - she was lied to.
How is it not ok to be able to sue a retailer who sells you one thing while claiming it's another?
Synonyms
Synonyms are hard.
But laws are easy
Sugar should be labeled "Sugar", and not "Evaporated cane juice, "disaccharides," "(2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol", or any of a number of other synoyms.
the juice vs. sugar stuff is
the juice vs. sugar stuff is based solely on FDA industry guidance. While following their guidance is advisable, they are explicitly not regulations and are debatable. The FDA, as with other agencies, issue guidance when asked questions by the industry about how to interpret regulations. That there is official guidance usually shows the regulations are open to multiple interpretations.
Evaporated cane juice vs. sugar
A couple of random concepts that 10 seconds of googling and reading helped me discover:
1) Evaporated cane juice is approximately equally processed than the white sugar the plaintiff was expecting in her almond milk
2) A quick look at the nutrition label on the Shelf Stable Chocolate Milk on the Almond Breeze site has 20 grams of sugar plainly written on the label.
3) Unsweetened Shelf Stable Chocolate Milk exists.
My comments:
1) 20 grams per serving is a spit-ton of sugar for any food or beverage. If the plaintiff is truly concerned about health and sugar, she wouldn't touch that product with a 10 foot pole.
2) I guess the word "cane" wasn't any kind of indication to the plaintiff that sugar was somehow involved with the making of this product.
3) Evaporated sugar cane is all-natural.
And perhaps, most importantly, much like the plaintiff who filed suit against Coca Cola for not being a health drink, who in their right mind thinks that chocolate milk of any kind in a shelf stable box at a huge supermarket chain is created on high by the health food gods?
It is easy peasy to make your own almond milk and control the ingredients. Soak almonds overnight, drain, blend almonds with water and your sweetener of choice (I like maple syrup), strain and drink.
Its not about sugar
Its not about sugar. Or preservatives. Or whatever.
Its about GIMME CASH.
Pay me to go away or spend millions on attorney fees. Either way you lose.
Now fork it over.
Funny that.
20 grams of sugar is, well, 20 grams of sugar. Can't get much plainer than that.
Why "cane juice"
Evaporated sugar beet juice will get you to the same place. When I was a kid in Ore-Ida land, I used to be impressed at how our local beet sugar refinery was directly next to and connected to the region's soda bottler.
"the healthier sounding
"the healthier sounding "evaporated cane juice,"
Yeah, that's much healthier sounding.
Right, because sometimes you
Right, because sometimes you swap out your glass of juice in the morning for a glass of sugar, right? They certainly sound identical.
"healthier sounding"
"healthier sounding"
So she just assumed it was healthier and never bothered to actually look into what she was eating? I hope this lawsuit fails hard.
I need to go find some mislabeled products
Well I guess now I need to go find myself some products with ambiguous labels so I can make a ton of money.
A quick Google shows
that Casley Vass is a man and a BFD firefighter? And the complaint refers to the plaintiff as "he". No offense.
Yep - he's a he
Adam - see bottom of page 17/top of page 18 of the complaint you attached.
Thanks, folks!
Gender correction done.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the food industry uses
deceptive practices to hide the unhealthy nature of some of its products. Calling sugar "evaporated cane juice" is clearly one of those bits of dishonest sleight-of-hand. But just because it's common doesn't make it any less sleazy. Until food labeling reform gets through our do-nothing, owned-by-corporate-interests Congress, what other recourse do consumers have?
I tend to look at such lawsuits with a squint, but this guy has a legitimate point, even if it makes him look like a gullible dumbass. Call sugar what it is, call MSG what it is, don't let Big Food call HFCS "corn sugar", don't allow pictures of strawberries on products that contain no strawberries (looking at you, Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups), and ban the term "natural", with its specious implication of healthfulness.
Im pretty sure
The "Chocolate" in the description on the box tells you just how unhealthy your "milk" is.
You don't need a PHD to understand there is going to be lots and lots of sweetener inside.
There's nothing particularly unhealthy about chocolate,
per se. It's the deceptively-labeled sugar that's the problem. And food labeling should be clear enough for a person with a room-temperature IQ to understand.
Oh puh-leeese. If you're
Oh puh-leeese. If you're that concerned about what you're putting into your body, and you can't be bothered to Google "evaporated cane juice" or look at the carbohydrates portion of the nutrition label, but you can be bothered to contact an attorney, you are solely out for cash.
Again, food labels need to be clear enough for a
not-very-bright person to understand. Not everyone has a smartphone with a data plan, or a computer with Internet access. In any event, nobody should be expected to have to resort to Google to decipher a food label.
Look, anyone who doesn't
Look, anyone who doesn't understand what "evaporated cane sugar" means, but still has the wherewithal to know how to contact a lawyer, is really only out for cash. Sorry.
Agreed. The damages sought are
bullshit. But I stand by the point that the usage is deceptive, and food labeling needs to be clear enough to be understood by the less sophisticated among the citizenry, including a lot of folks that don't have online access to the basic research on the subject in their pockets. It's too easy for the more prosperous among us to take that for granted.
Doesn't the fact that you
Doesn't the fact that you have to research what the ingredients are prove that the labeling is deceptive
I assume most people know that evaporated cane juice is sugar, but the manufacturer is obviously using that term to try to trick people
Why shouldn't they be required to label their product clearly and plainly?
It Should At Least Say "Evaporated Sugar Cane Juice"
It's sugar! The word "sugar" needs to be in the ingredient name somewhere; to leave it out while using the psuedo-healthy word "juice" is a deliberate attempt to deceive consumers. It's too bad ordinary citizens have to enforce common sense names for food ingredients; the FDA is not very effective.
EVAPORATED CANE SUGAR - Also known as Turbinado Sugar.
Fine crystals of light brown sugar are prepared from unrefined,
minimally processed juice of sugar cane.
Chocolate
Chocolate itself is actually quite healthy - it is the sugar and fat that gets put with it that can be unhealthy in excess.
Organic Honey
The same applies to organic honey. Its almost impossible bees will usually forage within a radius of three miles from the hive, but have been known to go as far as five miles.
All milk products have sugar in them
All milk and milk-like products have sugar in them. In cow's milk the sugar is lactose. In a fake milk product such as almond milk, sugar is required to make the product taste similar to cow's milk.
OTOH, trying to pass off table sugar as "evaporated cane juice" is sleazy.
"Natural" is a big scam anyway
Whether something is "natural" bears no relation to whether it's good. That's a classic logical fallacy. Whenever I see "natural" in marketing type I get more suspicious of the contents, not less.
While I agree
that evaporated cane juice is just one step away from white sugar, I think anyone who's gone past the 6th grade should know that most commercially available sugar comes from sugar "cane" and hence anything on a label with the word cane in it should be construed as sugar of some sort. But really dude, 5 MILLION dollars? Were you really so traumatized by this that you need that much money to recover?