Earlier this Month, the FDA sent a Warning Letter to Nestle USA regarding three Juicy Juice products: Juicy Juice Brain Development Fruit Juice Beverage (Apple), Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine, and Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Grape. Here’s why:

1. “No Sugar Added”. This statement appears on all 3 products, but is not allowed if the product is targeted at children under 2 years old. The Juicy Juice website additionally states “Naturally Lower in Sugar”, again, unallowed for products intended for children under 2 years old.

2. 100% What? Take a quick look at the product name: Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine. Reads as if it is made solely from Oranges and Tangerines. WRONG! It is 100% juice but in fact, most of the juice is from apples. In finer print, once can read “Flavored juice blend from concentrate with other natural flavors & added ingredients“.  Tricky! According to the FDA,

The manner in which the latter statement is presented makes it less conspicuous and prominent than the other label statements and vignettes and therefore less likely to be read or understood by consumers at the time of purchase.

Nestlé confirmed the company had received the letter on the Juicy Juice products. “We are intending to fully cooperate with the FDA in bringing this matter to a conclusion,” a spokesperson said.

What you need to know:

In every regulated industry there’s a cat and mouse game between companies and regulators. No different is the food industry and its main regulator, the Food and Drug Administration. Companies are so eager to create a competitive advantage through marketing, that they stretch the truth, often times falling down a slippery slope to misleading claims.

Nestlé is no better than the rest. We wrote about Juicy Juice in the past. Its marketing tactics are such a pile of BS.

What’s with “Brain Development” you ask? Although DHA (an omega 3 fatty acid) may help with brain development, the evidence is still very shaky, and the downside of such a sugary drink far outweigh the brain benefits.

A half a cup serving (for toddlers) contains TWO AND A HALF TEASPOONS OF SUGAR! This is not a product that should be served regularly to children or toddlers.

What to do at the supermarket:

It appears that now we can’t even trust the NAME of a product to be accurate anymore. The best suggestion when shopping is to keep your eyes focused just on the ingredient list and nutrition facts panel. Regarding juice for children, and especially babies and toddlers – save yourself some money and a future of cavities and fighting with your kids – Serve only water from the day they start drinking.

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flickr photo: kthread

Organic food gets a nice seal of approval from the USDA that we can all see on the package. And meats imported from abroad must be labeled with their country of origin. (COOL Legislation).

But some markings on foods are not regulated at all. The most common is the “Natural” label which has been slapped on every kind of food imaginable.it is meaningless in that “natural” in no way means “healthy”.

The latest trend is to mark foods as “local”. But what does local mean? Fresher, Tastier, Healthier, and Better for planet Earth? The Guardian, a well respected UK newspaper, asks, and immediately answers:

What you need to know:

Food manufacturers and supermarkets have one goal – to sell us as much as possible. The creative marketing people working for these corporations have a keen sense for what is popular with the public. And they know very well to translate it into messages that play all the right chords on our mind.

Low-fat was a big hit, then low-carb. Organic is huge, despite a current blow due to the faltering economy.

And Local has now become the flavor de jour. Never mind the little discrepancies, such as the food actually arriving from hundreds of miles away, or stored for 6 months in chillers, or picked from a nearby orchard but shipped halfway across the country to a sorting and washing facility.

What to do at the supermarket:

As Mark Bittman, cookbook author and NY Times food writer explains:

You can’t trust the supermarket companies to sell you only good, wholesome food. Yet they’ll try to convince you that everything they sell is exactly that. So: skip the [marketing] labels, watch what you buy, and strive for goodness, no matter where you find it.

Keep this in mind the next time you shop at the supermarket. Or, try a farmers market nearby. It’s springtime and there should be one open near you every weekend.

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