Food, Lawsuit of the Day

Lawsuit of the Day: How Many Synthetic Genes Can Be in an 'All-Natural' Snack?

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As close readers of Above the Law will guess, I only go to Whole Foods when I feel like mocking the pasty vegans who are too emaciated to defend themselves. We live in a modern world of delicious processed foodstuffs. People ate “organic” or “all natural” food back in hunter-gatherer times, right before they died at the ripe, old age of 32 from lack of protein over the winter.

Last year, we learned that “real beef” doesn’t exactly have to mean everything in your taco is beef. Now, we’ve got a lawsuit that asks how “natural” a snack has to be for it to be called “all natural”….

Reuters has the lawsuit filed by Chris Shake who got his panties in a bunch over the all-natural offerings from Tostitos and SunChips:

Shake said he shelled out an additional 10 cents per ounce of chips to buy the allegedly “all-natural” Tostitos and SunChips instead of a product such as Doritos, which makes no such claim.

Independent testing conducted on samples of Frito-Lay products labeled “all natural” uncovered the presence of ingredients – including corn and vegetable oils – made from genetically modified plants, the lawsuit said.

Had he known that, Shake would never have paid a premium to purchase the “all-natural” chips, the lawsuit said, calling Frito-Lay’s labels “deceptive.”

It’s. A Goddamn. Potato Chip! Shake does know that those aren’t, you know, naturally occurring in the wild, right? There are no fields where SunChips naturally bloom next to the river of salsa on the plains of Buffalo chicken wings. At some point, something very unnatural happened to the potato to turn it into a cheesy crisp.

In any event:

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[A]ccording to the suit, “genetically modified organisms are created artificially in a laboratory by swapping genetic material across species to exhibit traits not naturally theirs,” the complaint said. “Since a reasonable consumer assumes that seeds created in such a way are not ‘all natural,’ advertising Tostitos and SunChips as natural is deceptive and likely to mislead a reasonable consumer.”

As a reasonable consumer, I don’t want Shake speaking for me. But hey, why should any potato chip maker be calling their product all natural anyway?

A spokeswoman for Frito-Lay, Aurora Gonzalez, said the company was confident the labeling on its packaging “complies with all regulatory requirements.”

About those regulatory requirements:

According to the Center for Food Safety, there is no comprehensive, formal definition of the term “natural” when it is used on food labels, with the exception of some meat products regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Basically, the FDA has better things to do than worry about what the nonsensical distinction of “all natural.” That’s the federal government’s way of saying “we don’t have time for the mouth-breathers willing to pay 10 cents more for meaningless words on a package.” It’s non-regulatory behavior at its finest.

If the FDA doesn’t have time for this, I really hope a court doesn’t either.

Frito-Lay chips not “all natural”: lawsuit [Reuters]

Earlier: You Didn’t Really Think You Were Eating ‘Beef’ at Taco Bell, Did You?

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