Last Friday, a California court ruled that Monsanto’s Roundup chemical caused groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson to get cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) and ordered the company to pay $289M in damages.

This was a watershed moment for the industry, as organic advocates had been sounding the alarm for years about the toxic effects of this herbicide, whose main ingredient in glyphosate. Read more »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the shameful truth about the $9 million Naked Juice class action lawsuit settlement.

One of the most problematic aspects of the settlement were the non-profits who were selected as the designated beneficiaries of any unclaimed money.

Despite having more than 30,000 signatures in support of naming Food Democracy Now! as the designated non-profit, our effort failed. The appeal got rejected, and the original non-profits will stay as is.

So, the case is over and now it is time for consumers to claim their piece of the settlement.

The good news is that you do not need to have your original receipts from any eligible Naked Juice purchases in order to be awarded a piece of the settlement amount. Read more »

Last week, Naked Juice agreed to settle a very important class action lawsuit which accused the company of deceptive labeling.

The primary basis of the lawsuit stemmed from the company’s use of the words “All Natural” on products that contained Archer Daniels Midland’s Fibersol-2 (“a soluble corn fiber that acts as a low-calorie bulking agent”), fructooligosaccharides (an alternative sweetener), other artificial ingredients, such as calcium pantothenate (synthetically produced from formaldehyde), and genetically-modified soy.

Since these ingredients are either genetically-engineered or synthetically produced and do not exist in nature, it is completely misleading to consumers for these juices to claim to be “All Natural.”

As part of the settlement, Naked Juice, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, has agreed to remove the label “All Natural” from all of its juices and to pay a $9 million settlement to the class action group. Read more »

As I have been predicting, the class action lawsuits would continue against major food companies for using genetically-modified ingredients (GMOs) and/or synthetic substances in their “all-natural” products.

The trend started first started with Con Agra then moved to Kashi and Naked Juice. Now it is against PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay.

In a class action lawsuit filed (PDF) by law firm Milberg LLP against Frito-Lay, the claim states that the company markets its Tostitos and Sun Chips products as “made with all natural ingredients” when in fact they are not “all natural”.

The lawsuit contends that the ingredients are not “all natural” because the corn and vegetable oils (soybean, corn and canola) that they are using are all genetically-modified. Therefore, they are not “all natural” and are counter to what Frito-Lay is marketing them as. Read more »

The lawsuits against industrial food companies just keep piling up.

First, it was Wesson Oils who got sued for using GMOs in its products that the company claimed were “100% Natural”.

Then, Kashi got sued for using prescription drugs, irradiated substances, pesticides that are a by-product of uranium mining, and federally declared hazardous substances in products that it claimed were “All-Natural” and contained “Nothing Artificial”.

Now, here comes a class action lawsuit against Naked Juice (owned by PepsiCo) for using genetically-modified ingredients and synthetic substances in products that were marketed as “Non-GMO” and “All-Natural”.

Highlights of the Naked Juice lawsuit accuse the company of:

1) Labeling its products as “Non-GMO” when, in fact, it knowingly used genetically-modified ingredients in its products. Read more »

Recently, I wrote about how ConAgra and its Wesson Oils division were facing a class action lawsuit because the company was claiming that its products were “all-natural” when, in fact, they contained genetically-modified ingredients, which are not “all-natural”.

This is an incredibly important case and could set a massive precedent in the food industry regarding GMOs.

Well, the good news continues.

A new class action lawsuit has been filed, this time against Kashi and its parent company Kellogg’s. The reason?

Kashi’s GoLean and TLC products are marketed as “all-natural” and state that they contain “nothing artificial” when, in fact, they are “composed almost entirely of synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients”, so says the lawsuit.

But wait, it gets worse. MUCH WORSE. Read more »

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about the important differences between “natural” and “organic”, and that “natural” really means nothing since it doesn’t have any strict regulations like we have with “organic”.

Making matters worse is that our government does absolutely nothing to crack down on the rampant abuse of the word “natural”.

As a result, major food companies aggressively push this marketing term onto consumers and try to coax them into thinking that “natural” means something healthy.

(Believe me, they are having tremendous success. People tell me all of the time that what they eat is “all-natural”, hoping to impress me. It doesn’t work.)

Well, this abuse might be coming to an end sometime very soon, and it is has nothing to do with the efforts of the people from the FTC, FDA or USDA.

It has everything to do with a major class-action litigation law firm, Milberg LLP, who sees the rights of consumers being violated by major corporate food companies.

THE LAWSUIT

Milberg LLP, a serious player when it comes to class action lawsuits, is suing ConAgra because it has been selling a line of Wesson Oils and advertising them as “100% Natural” on the labels. Read more »