A recent study has purportedly concluded that adults who consumed more than 21 percent of their daily calories from added sugars (those found in sweetened beverages, grain-based desserts, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, candy, and other processed foods) doubled their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. Quanhe Ye et al., “Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults,” JAMA Internal Medicine, February 2014. Led by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study relied on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys 1998-1994, 1999-2004 and 2005-2010, which showed that more than 70 percent of adults receive at least 10 percent of their caloric intake from added sugars. The results also allegedly found that, compared to participants who consumed less than 8 percent of calories from added sugar, those who consumed approximately 17-21 percent of calories from added sugar had a 38 percent higher risk of…
Category Archives Issue 512
A recent marketing promotion has drawn the attention of keen-eyed literary buffs after a University of Anglia lecturer tweeted that the stock photo of a stern-looking man used to sell Tyrrells Potato Crisps is actually a portrait of R.S. Thomas, a famous Welsh poet who died in 2000 and was known as “the fiery poet-priest.” Jeremy Noel-Tod, who teaches literature and creative writing, told The Church Times that he imagined Thomas would have been “deeply contemptuous of the whole business, though he is also reported to have a wickedly dry sense of humor in person, so he might privately have relished the way in which this facetious piece of marketing has backfired.” “When we see an eccentric old photograph—like the one on the front of this bag—we can’t help but dream up a silly caption,” states the packet of sweet chilli and red-pepper crisps adorned with Thomas’s visage that offers winners…
In a Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) Update article titled “State Law Approaches to Curtail Digital Food Marketing Tactics Targeting Young Children,” Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) staff attorney Cara Wilking describes the types of digital marketing to children younger than age 8 that should be proscribed because they are unable to identify it as marketing. These include “advergames” and “digital sweepstakes,” which Wilking contends constitute deceptive trade practices and illegal lotteries. She calls for food and beverage companies to cease using “harmful digital marketing tactics” and for state attorneys general to take action against this marketing under consumer-protection statutes. Among other matters, Wilking argues that a number of state consumer-protection laws “explicitly address indirect advertising akin to pester power marketing in order to cover unfair and deceptive marketing that is designed to influence others” as she explains how the parental responsibility concept should not preclude legal interventions to…
Subway has reportedly announced plans to remove azodicarbonamide from its breads after a food blogger’s petition criticized the restaurant chain for including “the same chemical used to make yoga mats, shoe soles, and other rubbery objects” in its U.S. products. Owned by Doctor’s Associates Inc., Subway apparently released a media statement confirming that it had started phasing out the ingredient before FoodBabe.com’s Vani Hari launched her campaign, which garnered 60,000 signatures and sent readers to the company’s Facebook page to complain. “We are already in the process of removing azodicarbonamide as part of our bread improvement efforts despite the fact that it is a USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approved ingredient. The complete conversion to have this product out of the bread will be done soon,” a Subway spokesperson was quoted as saying. See Associated Press and CNN, February 6, 2014; The Independent, February…
A Texas Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s grant of the defendants’ summary judgment motion in a legal malpractice action brought by a mushroom distributor, finding that he failed to prove lost profits as to his negligence claim and filed his breach of fiduciary duty claim too late under the applicable statute of limitations. Thomas v. Carnahan Thomas, LLP, No. 05-11-01615-CV (Tex. Ct. App., 5th Dist., decided February 5, 2014). The defendants represented mushroom distributor Stuart Thomas and provided legal advice as to one of the ongoing disputes he had with the company that produced the mushrooms he distributed. Among other matters, the attorneys told Thomas he could violate non-compete agreements in his distribution and employment contracts and also unsuccessfully represented him in handling his declaratory judgment action as to the non-compete agreements. The court agreed with the attorneys that Thomas had no evidence of lost profits because…
A putative statewide consumer-fraud class action has been filed in a Florida state court against Living Harvest Foods, Inc. over use of the term “evaporated cane juice” (ECJ) on food product labels rather than sugar. Miller v. Living Harvest Foods Inc., No. __ (Fla. Cir. Ct., Miami-Dade Cty., filed January 30, 2014). While the specific products at issue are not named, the plaintiff contends that the defendant “conceals the fact that its Products have added sugar by referring to the sugar as ECJ, a ‘healthy’ sounding name made up by the sugar industry years ago to sell sugar to ‘healthy’ food manufacturers to use in their consumer products. ECJ is not the common or usual name of any type of sweetener, or even any type of juice, and the use of such a name is false and misleading. Defendant uniformly lists ECJ as an ingredient on its Products, as well as…
A federal court in New York has denied in part and granted in part the motion to dismiss filed by the defendants to consumer-fraud litigation claiming that their Smart Balance® Fat-Free milk products with added omega-3s are misbranded because they contain 1 gram of fat from the omega-3 oil blend ingredient. Koenig v. Boulder Brands, Inc., No. 13-1186 (S.D.N.Y., order entered January 31, 2014). The court determined that the state law-based claims were not preempted by federal food labeling laws, whether the claims involve the application of milk regulations as argued by the plaintiffs or combination product requirements as argued by the defendants. Among other things, the court refused to find the defendants’ “combination products” preemption theory tenable because (i) it was based on FDA compliance policy guides, “which constitute advisory opinions”; (ii) the defendants failed to cite any FDA policy or regulations directly addressing the milk products at issue…
Missouri Attorney General (AG) Chris Koster has sued California AG Kamala Harris, seeking to enjoin the enforcement of a voter-approved ballot initiative (Prop. 2) and law (A.B. 1437) that will increase the size of egg-laying hen enclosures and decrease flock densities both for California producers and those in other states wishing to sell eggs in California. Missouri ex rel. Koster v. Harris, No. 14-0067 (E.D. Cal., filed February 3, 2014). According to the complaint, Missouri egg farmers will be forced under the law to “incur massive capital improvement costs to build larger habitats for some or all of Missouri’s seven million egg-laying hens, or they can walk away from the state whose consumers bought one third of all eggs produced in Missouri last year. The first option will raise the cost of eggs in Missouri and make them too expensive to export to any state other than California. The second…
California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has entered a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture relating to “cooperation and communication in the implementation of Proposition 65 with respect to exposure to Proposition 65 listed chemicals in food or food additives.” According to OEHHA, the agreement “describes the types of information that will be shared between the two agencies prior to public release and a mechanism by which the sharing can be accomplished.” Proposition 65 (Prop. 65) was adopted by voter initiative in 1986; it requires businesses to provide warnings when they cause an exposure to a chemical listed as known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. The MOU applies to those chemicals listed under Prop. 65 “that are or may be found in California’s soil, food products, agricultural residues and fertilizers.” See OEHHA Press Release, February 5, 2014.…
California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) will conduct a symposium on children’s health February 25-26, 2014, in Sacramento. According to OEHHA, the agency will conduct the symposium “to hear some of the latest science regarding impacts of chemical exposures during development. This is a broad topic and thus we are focusing in three areas: 1) epigenetic changes from environmental exposures; 2) impacts of toxicants on the developing lung and brain: 3) new in vitro methods for assessing potential for developmental toxicity.” OEHHA hopes that regulatory scientists in the state will begin thinking about (i) “How to incorporate complex interactions into risk assessment, particularly for early life exposures”; (ii) “How to incorporate information from new toxicity testing paradigms into risk assessments now; and” (iii) “How to incorporate impacts of non-chemical stressors that increase vulnerability, and whether current methods of risk assessment adequately account for at least some of…
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