Mother Sues Cereal Companies for Deceptive Labeling

You can’t help but see a profusion of new ads and marketing ploys to get us to buy cereals that purportedly contain less sugar. Well, a San Diego mother of two daughters felt so deceived by the new “low sugar” claims on popular kids’ breakfast cereals that she's taking legal action. Homemaker Jennifer Hardee is suing three big cereal companies, Kraft Foods Co., General Mills Cereals, and Kellogg USA Inc., claiming that they’re conducting misleading advertising.

For the past couple of years, a number of attorneys with experience successfully suing tobacco companies have been gearing up for such litigation against "Big Food" and "Big Sugar." In fact, they cite misleading labeling and deceptive marketing as two potential targets for lawsuits. It'll be intriguing to see how the lawsuit and others pan out.

Comments

[Cath]

I'm sorry Sam thinks this is not the "cereal companies fault". I don't know, maybe the sugar just grew there naturally! It's well known in the food industry that we have a natural preference for sweet things. Unfortunately, this has been exploited to the detriment of our health. I suggest anyone interested check out "sugar blues" by William Dufty. In the UK a good organisation is the Food Commission, www.foodcomm.org.uk Cath

[sam]

i think it's not the fault of the cereal company because all people have to do is not buy it if it has too much sugar it says it has low sugar so it means it probably has less sugar than before. parents, don't let your children buy the cereal(yeah, because that's what they buy with their money) or just don't buy it yourselves because it's not the cereal company's fault

[Mayra Almonte]

It's amazing what the food labels say when I read them. It seems that everything has sugar in it. It says it clearly, "Sugar". Why do they need to add sugar in everything? And this is the information that they are willing to give us. I could imagine the information that is hidden from us.

[Terry]

This is really great news that someone is actually taking legal action against food companies that sell sugar sprinkled with food. Processed sugar is linked to so many diseases and it is addictive, which *probably* the sugar industry and food industry know - it's time that their tactics come to light. For the last 20 years the number of packaged products that contain processed sugar has increased to the point that unless you read labels REALLY carefully, chances are every packaged food item you buy at the supermarket has either cane juice, organic cane juice, fructose, beet juice, or some such euphemism for processed sugar. At the same time, the numbers of people with diabetes -- a disease that 20 to 30 years ago was relatively rare -- has skyrocketed to include children and young adults who, no doubt, are/were raised on sugar coated cereals, sodas, and packaged foods; arthritis is epidemic and sugar consumption is linked to that; some cancers are linked to an overabundance of sugar in the diet -- and the list goes on. One of the most disturbing things about sugar, besides the fact that it ravages the immune system, is that it turns to alcohol in the body and has a drunken-like effect on the mind, which could explain a lot of things I guess.