Kraft Foods’ Crystal Light brand was one of the organisations notified for its use of the word ‘natural’ in connection with its Natural Lemonade, Natural Pink Lemonade, Natural Lemon Iced Tea and Natural Lemon Decaffeinated Iced Tea products.
These creations contain a variety of unnatural ingredients, including artificial colours such as Red 40, Yellow 5 and Blue 1, as well as the factory produced texturiser maltodextrin and the synthetic preservative butylated hydroxyanisole.
CSPI’s second pre-litigation notice was sent to Smart Balance for the company’s illegal health claim that Smart Balance Blended Butter Sticks ‘help block cholesterol’, and Abott Laboratories for its claim that Ensure Complete Nutrition Shakes and Ensure Muscle Health Shakes are suitable to consume twice a day.
“In a perfect world, agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission would be aggressively policing the marketplace and taking enforcement action against companies like these,” said CSPI executive director Michael F Jacobson. “Until then, lawsuits by consumer groups and private citizens can play an important role by using the courts to get companies to change their labelling and advertising for the better.”
CSPI’s litigation department won a 2007 agreement with Kellogg’s over setting nutrition standards for the foods it markets to kids, and its lawsuits, have prompted KFC and Burger King to accelerate the pace at which they remove artificial trans fat from their fried foods.
The US-based group has also spurred General Mills and Pfizer to improve labelling on certain products and made Airborne provide refunds to consumers who bought deceptively labelled items.
Source: The Center for Science in the Public Interest
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