Mother Jones has published a March 5, 2014, interview with journalist Murray Carpenter about his forthcoming book, Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit HelpsUs, Hurts, and Hooks Us, which aims to “bring us the inside perspective at the additive that Salt Sugar Fat overlooked.” Speaking with Maddie Oatman about “how much caffeine is healthy, where the industry stands on labeling, and the most pretentious coffee preparation he’s observed,” Carpenter notes that current regulations do not require foods or supplements to disclose caffeine content on labeling. “There’s some voluntary labeling initiatives underway: The American Beverage Association has recommended bottlers do that, but you can still find energy drinks that don’t tell you how much caffeine is in them,” Carpenter is quoted as saying. “It’s not impossible for coffee and tea to start doing this. And for the products where caffeine is blended in very specific amounts, I don’t see any reason consumers…
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Johns Hopkins Public Health, a magazine of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, has devoted a special issue to food topics and includes an article about Health Policy and Management Professor Stephen Teret, who founded the Johns Hopkins Clinic for Public Health Law and Policy and recently engaged law students in a project addressing caffeinated foods. His students reportedly explained to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy Michael Taylor that the agency should be focusing on this issue. While Teret was apparently not concerned initially about any purported health effects of caffeine, he suspected that consumers might eat more waffles than normal if they started “feeling really good from the waffles because of the caffeine.” In this regard, he said, “It’s the sugar for some of these products or the salt or the fat that will ultimately give you health problems, not the caffeine, but,…
The European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA’s) Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) has issued an opinion reiterating a previous conclusion that products with less than 75 mg of caffeine may not bear an increased alertness claim, because most studies found “no effect of caffeine doses of less than 75 mg on various cognitive tasks (simple reaction time, choice reaction time and reaction time on other vigilance tasks).” EFSA has also issued an opinion regarding a request to broaden the approved cholesterol-lowering claim for plant sterol esters. In response to a request to extend conditions of plant sterol esters to an additional food matrix (powder supplements to be diluted in water), the panel reiterated its previous conclusion that, “while plant sterols added to foods such as margarine-type spreads, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and dairy products such as milk, yoghurts, including low-fat yoghurts, and cheese have been shown consistently to lower blood LDL-c…
A recent study has reported that although “mean caffeine intake has not increased among children and adolescents in recent years,” “coffee and energy drinks represent a greater proportion of caffeine intake as soda intake has declined.” Amy Branum, et al., “Trends in Caffeine Intake Among U.S. Children and Adolescents,” Pediatrics, February 2014. Using 24-hour dietary recall data obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999- 2010, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 73 percent of children consumed caffeine on a given day, with soda accounting for the majority of caffeine intake throughout the study period. “However, the proportion of intake attributable to soda declined from 62% in 1999-2000 to 38% in 2009-2010,” said the study’s authors. “Coffee accounted for only 10% of caffeine intake in 1999-2000, but increased significantly to nearly 24% of caffeine intake in 2009-2010… Energy drinks did not exist as…
Contributors to a recent New York Times “Room for Debate” column have urged CVS Caremark Corp. to stop selling soda, energy drinks and high-calorie snacks in the wake of its decision to discontinue the sale of tobacco products. Noting in her debate response that “food is not tobacco,” New York University Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle nevertheless encourages the retailer to increase its sales of fruits, vegetables and healthy snacks while decreasing the availability of items like soda, ice cream and chips. “If CVS wants to counter obesity,” she opines, “dropping soft drinks is a good place to start. They have scads of sugars, and kids who drink them regularly take in more calories, are fatter and have worse diets than kids who do not.” In addition, a senior scientist at the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions calls on CVS pharmacies to prohibit the sale of caffeinated energy drinks…
A California resident has filed a putative statewide class action against Ralphs Grocery Co., alleging that it misleads consumers by labeling its decaffeinated coffee products as “without caffeine” when they are actually, according to labeling fine print, “99.7% caffeine free.” Kopalian v. Ralphs Grocery Co., No. BC533846 (Cal. Super. Ct., Los Angeles Cty., filed January 22, 2014). The plaintiff invokes no state or federal law labeling violations, but instead claims that the labeling and packaging are “likely to confuse and mislead consumers.” He contends that he relied on the “without caffeine” labeling to make his purchase, believing that the product was 100 percent caffeine free, and chose it over other brands for this reason. Alleging breach of express warranty and violations of the state’s Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act, the plaintiff seeks injunctive relief, including a corrective advertising campaign, actual and punitive damages, restitution,…
The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) has issued the summary from an August 5-6, 2013, workshop titled “Caffeine in Food and Dietary Supplements.” Convened at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, workshop participants included “scientists with expertise in food safety, nutrition, pharmacology, psychology, toxicology, and related disciplines; medical professionals with pediatric and adult patient experience in cardiology, neurology, and psychiatry; public health professionals; food industry representatives; regulatory experts; and consumer advocates.” They addressed the “changing caffeine landscape” in which new food and dietary supplement products including the substance are entering the marketplace at a rapid pace and may be “targeting populations not normally associated with caffeine consumption.” Among the workshop objectives were (i) “[e]valuate the epidemiological, toxicological, clinical, and other relevant literature to describe important health hazards associated with caffeine consumption”; (ii) “[d]elineate vulnerable populations who may be at risk from caffeine exposure”; (iii) “[d]escribe caffeine…
According to news sources, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have entered an agreement to share documents and otherwise coordinate efforts in their ongoing investigations of Monster Beverage Corp., which, they allege, illegally markets highly caffeinated beverages to children. Herrera reportedly said, “Up until now, we have been working in parallel fashion, but now you will see greater cooperation. I have enormous respect for Attorney General Schneiderman and am glad to be working with his office in this major consumer protection issue.” Herrera further claimed that the company continues “to market its potentially dangerous products to children, despite the known risks it poses to young people. Hopefully, our efforts can lead to a reform of those practices.” The agreement was apparently struck about the same time that a court dismissed Monster Beverage’s attempt to stop Herrera’s investigation. Details about the ruling appear in…
A federal court in Washington has dismissed the second amended consumer fraud complaint filed against Costco Wholesale Corp. concerning its VitaRain® Enhanced Water Beverage; while the court dismissed the complaint without leave to amend, it did not dismiss it with prejudice. Maple v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 12-5166 (E.D. Wash., order entered November 1, 2013). The plaintiff claimed that the name “VitaRain” is itself deceptive, and the court disagreed, finding it implausible that it could “deceive a substantial portion of the public into believing that the beverage is ‘full of vitamins only’ or that it is a ‘nutritional’ or ‘healthy’ beverage. The name ‘VitaRain’ is largely nonsensical.” The plaintiff also associated the name with another beverage product containing the word “vitamin,” and the court stated in this regard, “Plaintiff’s claim must be limited to the actual representation, ‘VitaRain’ in this case, and not some imagined representation he arrived at through…
A federal court in Washington has dismissed without prejudice a number of claims in a putative class action alleging that the producer and seller of a vitamin water product misled consumers by failing to disclose that the product contains caffeine or its relative amount and falsely represents that the product is a “natural tonic” and contains “natural caffeine.” Maple v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 12-5166 (E.D. Wash., order entered August 1, 2013). While the court determined that the plaintiff had standing by rejecting Costco’s contention that the labeling on one product unit was not visible through the packaging encasing the variety packs in which it is sold, it found that federal law preempts claims that the defendants were required to disclose the presence of caffeine or state its relative amount in the drink. Among the claims that the court dismissed for insufficient pleading were (i) violation of the state’s consumer…
