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FDA Slams Nestle Over Juicy Juice, BOOST Claims
Food giant Nestle got some early lumps of coal from the Food and Drug and Administration. Two letters warn the company its health claims on some beverages are against the law.
A box of Juicy Juice.
"100% Juice" labels on juice boxes like this one are being questioned by the FDA. (Darren McCollester/Getty Images) "100% Juice" labels on juice boxes like this one are being questioned by the FDA. (Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
The first letter concerned Nestle Healthcare Nutrition's BOOST Kid Essentials Nutritionally Complete Drink. FDA claims Nestle is promoting the drink as a medical food, that treats "failure to thrive" as well as provides a medical benefit for children "pre/post surgery, injury or trauma, chronic illness."
FDA says they have no way of backing up these claims and that the drink cannot be marketed as a medical treatment. A marketing Web site-- Kidessentials.com-- mentioned by the FDA was "temporarily unavailable" Wednesday morning.
The second letter faulted Nestle for misleading ingredient labeling of its popular Juicy Juice children's drinks.
The letter disputes the labeling of the juice descriptions on Nestle's Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine and Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Grape drinks. FDA says labels appear to be claiming the drinks contain 100% Tangerine/Orange juice and 100% Grape juice. But a closer look at the ingredients list shows otherwise, with the fine print saying, "Flavored juice blend from concentrate with other natural flavors & added ingredients."
Lastly, the letter also blasted the company for its marketing of a special juice that helps with "brain development," for children under 2. Under FDA rules, no products can make nutrient content claims like this one if the product is marketed specifically for children in that age group, which Nestle's apparently did. The Web site for the product makes the claim "Her brain will triple in size by the time she's two: Juicy Juice Fruit Beverage with DHA is specially formulated for this early age group."
A representative from Nestle Beverage told Reuters they had received the letter and would "fully cooperate with the FDA in bringing this matter to a conclusion."
Our attempts to reach Nestle for comment were unsuccessful. The company has 15 days to respond with a plan of action to correct these violations and prevent future ones.



35 Comments so far
Show AllCapitalism is not beyond stooping to lie to obtain the almighty dollar, and at the consumer's expense.
I don't like juice anyway. I prefer high-fructose corn syrup. It tastes great and it's less filling. Seriously, is the water that Nestle Beverage bottles really water? They probably put corn syrup in that too. Such a fake world we live in.
This is the same company that tried to make the poorest in a third world country pay for the rain that ran off their roofs.
If they don't own something it's because some other corporation owns it.
Do you have an article link for that?
No, can't remember where I read it but I found this http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/03/25/who-owns-the-rain/
Thank you.
Juicy Juice = Crappy Crap.
What next? Soylent Green isn't really green?
No, it isn't really people. It's fake people, with additives, preservatives and flavorings.
I'm always apalled by the amount of waste in kid's products. God forbid they would have to pour their own juice out of a pitcher into a glass. They might actually see what the juice looks like. Thier juice comes in a pouch or a box that you pierce with a straw, suck out the mystery liquid, then toss in the nearest garbage can, then to the landfill where it sits impervious to sun, rain or degradation of any type. Teach those kids to be mindless consumers and excess waste producers early!
"then toss in the nearest garbage can"
if only they would - most end up as litter.
How about eating a real orange?
Morticia
Bingo!
Corporations are against humanity.
For profit only objective is immoral.
Yes indeed FDA, let's go after juicy juice but continue to ok irradiation of vegetables and gmo frankenfood to be spread across the land.
So glad you are on the case !!!
FDA Slams Nestle Over Juicy Juice, BOOST Claims
by Maggie Mertens
Yeah. Right. FDA slams, With what a wiffle bat? A fly swatter. FDA couldn't tell shit from a poor grade of mush.
Oh yeah! Nestle's in more trouble than if they killed a government mule. Man are they ever gonna get it now.
Anyone remember the successful NESTLE BOYCOTT of the late 1970's? It achieved its immediate aims globally, but after a brief hiatus, in 1988 the NESTLE boycott ... of ALL NESTLE products [baby food, cereals, etcetera] resumed and is still ongoing ... for reason.
Just Google ... The Nestle Boycott ... for information
Back in the '70's NESTLE was sending uncredentialed women who dressed up as nurses to give third-world nursing mothers free packages of baby formula.
NESTLE's campaign insisted that its Infant Formula was far superior to breast milk, and breastmilk did not give babies the full nutrition they really needed.
Wanting to do right by their babies, mothers used the formula. When they ran out, they had to buy the formula and most of them were too poor to do so. By that time also their breast milk had dried up. So they skipped feedings and/or added more water. Often the water was contaminated. Babies died; their growth was stunted; their brains damaged, they succumbed to simple diseases, etcetera.
NESTLE also gave their formula to nursing mothers in other poor countries, e.g., in Africa and South and Central America. This formula lacked nutritional ingredients that were in the regular formula, with the same or similar results as above.
When this news leaked out the NESTLE boycott was organized and went global. It is still going on. BOYCOTT any and all NESTLE products. Obviously, with JUICY JUICE and a variety of other products, NESTLE is still at their PROFIT-MAKING, no-matter-who-gets-harmed, heartless, cold-blooded activities. ... in this case infants and children.
There have been ramifications legally against NESTLE, but obviously it ain't enough.
BOYCOTT any and all NESTLE products! starting today!
/cm
"When this news leaked out [in the 70s] the NESTLE boycott was organized and went global. It is still going on. BOYCOTT any and all NESTLE products. Obviously, with JUICY JUICE and a variety of other products, NESTLE is still at their PROFIT-MAKING, no-matter-who-gets-harmed, heartless, cold-blooded activities."
I am still boycotting Nestle, because it still has the same heartless behavior and no plans whatsoever to change. They should be prosecuted under RICO! I won't buy their water or their food, and I go out of the way to be sure that there is no Nestle hidden in the labeling of what I buy.
I suggest that we all do the same and spread the information to all our friends and acquaintances.
Good move. Unfortunately, anything else you buy has probably a similar history.
Do you work for Nestle?
Whenever some informed, conscientious person contributes information distinguishing between good and bad choices, some dolt or shill (take your pick) tries to passively-aggressively contradict that information with the inertia-inducing "they're all the same" claim. The apparent goal: to discourage education, informed choices, and political action.
In truth there are important differences, and we should make informed choices. To begin, see:
http://organicconsumers.org/
http://www.cornucopia.org/
http://www.organicvalley.coop/
http://www.grist.org/
Ya know,
The Japanese used to say that "Business is War". Now I believe it. Fast food and convenience food businesses are trying to kill us. These CEO's really don't care who they kill with their spoiled peanut butter or their mislabeled preservative-soaked snake juice.
As long as they get their hundred million dollar bonus so that their spouse can donate some of it to a holy war somewhere they're going to keep poisoning us all.
The only question a CEO asks himself is: Can I get away with it? And in this case what's the penalty for possibly killing people who believed it would boost their compromised immune system? A little FDA letter goes out: Bad Bad Bad company. You've been severely reprimanded by the words in this letter. No fine, no ban, no investigation however, just keep a management position open for us boys in the FDA.
I've reached the conclusion that we're all still in the jungle trying to kill each other. There is no such thing as a CEO who cares about others. He's in the position because the shareholders think he can cheat and steal better than anyone else. We are all just a bunch of dressed-up apes who know very little about the world around us. We have no clue just how dangerous the tribal warfare that's waged against us daily really is.
If you trust anything that comes in a plastic-lined container, you're asking for trouble. Drink filtered water, eat fresh fruit picked off the tree by you. The tropics is the place to live baby. It automatically rains every few days and the strange plants and fruits are mostly edible, sweet, succulent and nutritious. None of them sprayed by MonInsanto. My health vastly improved when I stopped eating all processed food. It's fruits and veggies five times a day for me. It's hard to get the islanders not to fall for the lies of Madison Avenue Marketing Crime organizations. Here they are surrounded by non-GMO goodness and they buy the crap from the frutose-corn-surup-drug-dealer because he pumps his lies on TV, radio and billboards 24/7. Then when they get sick, it's assault by the pill-poppers who have a sugar pill for everything.
NATIONAL BOYCOTT
NATIONAL STRIKE
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I dumped all my Nestle products years ago. Now I always check the fine print.
The FDA only cares about the BOOST claim because it has to find some way to appease both Big Pharma and Big Agri. This same FDA says it's ok for Juicy Juice to be laden with high fructose corn syrup and yet they somehow have a problem of completely lifting the ban on stevia. The same FDA that lies about high fructose corn syrup having no harmful effects restricts stevia to "dietary supplement" not to be used in manufacturing ! The FDA is too lame to get anything done right.
Hi JB
"The same FDA that lies about high fructose corn syrup having no harmful effects restricts stevia to "dietary supplement" not to be used in manufacturing ! "
The FDA only restricts stevia until Cargill and Coke add special, proprietary, ingredients to stevia to create TRUVIA (TM) http://truvia.org/ for their exploitation.
I thought it was rebundia from Cargill but thanks for the correction and the link. This is just extra proof that the FDA is nothing but a corporate warehouse stooge for Big Agri and Pharma. The FDA needs to go or at least be reformed to pre-1981 status.
none of this would be a problem if parents would just stick to giving their kids KoolAid.
Since when has it become possible to believe advertisers labels??
Americans don't know what is in the food they consume, including meat.
Check the labels on products on grocery shelves these days; instead of telling us the source of foods, they say this product is distibuted by (xxxx).
FDA is a total failure.
FDA is setting up to destroy small natural supplement producers, by appearing to be forceful against the corporations it actually serves.
The FDA just kidnapped an herbalist out of Ecuador who had harmed no one.
http://www.naturalnews.com/027750_Greg_Caton_FDA.html
It's the same FDA that allows 100,000 people a year to die from prescription drugs, knew in advance that Merck's Vioxx would kill people but approved it and then left it on the market to kill 55,000, and threatened cherry growers that they were not even allowed to put a LINK to peer reviewed study on their website. The study showed that cherries are potentially ten times stronger than aspirin and ibuprofen and the other NSAIDs, in controlling pain and inflammation. Prescription NSAIDs kill more than 16,500 people a year while cherries do not kill.
So, what you are seeing about Nestle is PR for the FDA, one of the most corrupt agencies in the government, controlled now by the drug companies and Monsanto, and set to get police state power over farmers and small vitamin companies through S 510, coming up in January in the Senate. Expect more stunts by the FDA to look protective (nothing whatever will happen to Nestle but a small company would be shut down permanently - the USDA does the same with protecting the large filthy corporate slaughter houses while getting rid of local ones that are safe).
Expect some deaths to show how dangerous food is, in order to push a bill that is a corporate take over of the US food supply.
Amen and amen. Our government has been captured by those it was meant to regulate, all up and down the line. It coincidently made campaign contributions more valuable and then built a freeway for their commerce. They just renamed bribery and called it Freedom of Speech. It's how they control risk -- and us. Can we get it back? Not by focusing on making the other guy look bad, liberal or neocon, emphasizing our differences, creating division. We disagree more about the meaning of words than we do about what we believe in. We decry but never explain beyond a word.
FDA is a total failure.
That's another one for The Gipper!
His noble deregulationism has come home to roost.
You must mean his ignoble deregulationism.
But Ketchup IS regulated:
"Heinz introduced its tomato ketchup in 1875 and its recipe has become a standard for all ketchups. In fact, by law, all American ketchups contain tomatoes, vinegar, sweeteners, salt, spices, and herbs. Yes, the definition of ketchup is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Volume 2, Part 155, Section 194 (21CFR155.194).... And for the record, tomatoes, botanically, are fruits, not vegetables, even though, in 1981, under President Ronald Reagan, in a bureaucratic bumble, the USDA attempted to classify ketchup as a vegetable when served in school lunch programs."
(from http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/my_ingredients/zen_of_ketchup.html)
Ronnie is much more fun in his attitude towards Native Americans:
Text of remarks by President Reagan at Moscow State University. May 31, 1988.
"Let me tell you just a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have provided millions of acres of land for what are called preservations -- or reservations, I should say. They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life, as they had always lived there in the desert and the plains and so forth. And we set up these reservations so they could, and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care of them. At the same time, we provide education for them -- schools on the reservations. And they're free also to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of us, and many do. Some still prefer, however, that way -- that early way of life. And we've done everything we can to meet their demands as to how they want to live. Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us. As I say, many have; many have been very successful.
"And I'm very pleased to meet with them , talk with them at any time and see what their grievances are or what they feel they might be. And you'd be surprised: Some of them became very wealthy because some of those reservations were overlaying great pools of oil, and you can get very rich pumping oil. And so, I don't know what their complaint might be."
I must say, Poppy Bush may have had a sliver of a heart with his ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and "Read my HIPS", you anti-tax loafers. How the hell are we gonna pay for this stuff, anyway?! It's either borrow and spend or TAX and spend. I'd rather pay our way or leave it on the shelf and live without than keep falling into debt. But when Bush/Cheney came on to the scene the deficit (and resulting cumulative debt) was increasing, nearing $500 billion. (About what it is today) "You know, Paul (O'Neill; Treas. Sec.), Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Cheney said, during a tv news interview. "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." Cheney fired O'Neill a month later.
The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration."
Source: Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004
Shrub is of special foilage.
GW Bush: "Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." --Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004
Well, we can tell about the Republicans views on fiscal conservatism by what Senator Orrin Hatch said about Medicare D, the drug benefit, "it was standard practice not to pay for things." Now we have a deficit neutral "Health Care Reform bill" and the Republicans are going ballistic.