CSPI Screams over Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has issued an August 12, 2010, statement and letter lambasting Ben & Jerry’s “All Natural” ice cream and frozen yogurt for allegedly containing “alkalized cocoa, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, or other ingredients that either don’t exist in nature or that have been chemically modified.” The watchdog has threatened to take its concerns to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and state attorneys general if Unilever fails to drop the products’ marketing claim.
The group singles out cocoa processed with alkali as “the most frequently used unnatural ingredient,” followed by corn syrup, dextrose, invert sugar, brown rice syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and maltodextrin. Moreover, CSPI maintains that alkalizing cocoa changes its chemical structure and reduces acidity and flavonol content. “Indeed,” states the CSPI press release, “Unilever recently sponsored research to investigate an association between flavonol intake and incidence of stroke.”
CSPI purports that 48 flavors include such “non-natural” ingredients, adding that FDA has not issued a formal definition but evidently considers the term natural to mean “that nothing artificial or synthetic . . . has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected in the food.” CSPI thus concludes that these products are misbranded under section 403(a) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. § 434(a).
