Kashi products are no longer 'natural'

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Kellogg's has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused them of misleading people by using terms like "all natural" and "nothing artificial" on the labels of products that contained artificial ingredients. The Associated Press reports that the cereal company will remove such descriptions from some of its Kashi products and also pay $5 million.

A February article on FoodNavigator-USA.com took a look at such "all-natural" lawsuits over the past decade. They went from under 10 from 2003-10 to 49 in 2011, 85 in 2012, and 58 in 2013. Anne Regan, a partner at Zimmerman Reed in Minneapolis, told FoodNavigator that the drop-off in 2013 may be due to the "dampening effect" of uncertainty as to whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would decide if foods labelled "natural" could or could not contain GMOs.

The FDA ended up declining to make a determination, at least in the context of private lawsuits. And it remains cagey about what it considers a "natural" product. Its website states that the concept is difficult to define when referring to food products, as most of them have been processed away from their natural state. It does say that "the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added colour, artificial flavors or synthetic substances."

Pyridoxine hydrochloride, calcium pantothenate, hexane-processed soy ingredients, ascorbic acid, glycerin and sodium phosphate were some of the ingredients listed in the Kashi lawsuit. BF