Food/Groceries

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RXBARs: Simple Ingredients, Simply Incomplete Ingredients List

Our friends at TruthinAdvertising.org discovered an interesting fine print issue that we want to share with you.

There are many “health” bars on the market that frankly look like glorified candy bars except they are made with healthier ingredients. On such product is called RXBAR:

RXBAR

They came up with a brilliant marketing gimmick to put a big and bold ingredients list on the front of each package to convey its contents. Their slogan is, “We tell you what’s on the inside on the outside.”

Shoppers may well grab this bar or one of the other varieties thinking that the four or five ingredients shown are the sum total of the contents.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The ingredients panel on the back of the package lists all the ingredients in the actual order of predominance:

Dates, Peanuts, Egg Whites, Natural Flavor, Sea Salt.

While the number of missing ingredients was minor for this flavor, the other bars that the company sells can have up to nine total ingredients while only four are shown on the front.

rxbar varieties

Even their television ad seems to acknowledge that prospective purchasers could be misled by the ingredients list on the face of the package because they inconspicuously make the following disclosure at the end of the commercial:

*MOUSE PRINT:

disclaimer

A company spokesperson told TruthinAdvertising:

“We do not claim that the front of the packaging represents all ingredients in the product.”

What do you think? Are the RXBAR packages potentially misleading?

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The Case of the Missing Pasta Sauce

Irene D. recently wrote to Mouse Print* complaining about being shortchanged at her local Olive Garden in Framingham, Massachusetts.

A fan of their pasta sauces, she ordered four pints to go of two different types as shown in their menu:

Olive garden sauces

When Irene got home, she got a shock when she opened the bowls:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Olive Garden actually sauces

The bowls were filled less than halfway! To see how much sauce she actually got, our consumer poured the contents of one bowl into a 16 ounce container:

Olive sauce in a pint container

It looks like Irene got only five or so ounces instead of a full pint. Paying close to $25 for not much sauce, she contacted the customer service folks at Olive Garden. Guest relations at the company apologized, asked for more details, and promised to make it right. They then followed up with this:

It looks as if you were provided the dipping sauce portions instead of the pints you ordered. Whether taking your meal with you or dining-in with us, you should always be able to count on receiving an accurate order. It is obvious from your post that we failed on that promise, and we apologize for the mistakes made in preparing your order.

They also sent her a $40 gift card. Great!

We contacted the public relations department of Darden, the parent company of Olive Garden, to ask what procedures the company has in place to assure that products sold by weight or volume actually meet the promised quantity, and what steps they would take to prevent problems like this in the future. They did not reply to our email. Twice.

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Starbucks Wins Underfilled Latte Cup Case

Starbucks Two years ago, we told you about an issue of Starbucks allegedly underfilling cups of its latte because it was counting the height of the milk foam in its calculations of the number of fluid ounces in each cup.

Well, a United States district court judge in California just ruled in the company’s favor. In her ruling, she deflated each of the consumer plaintiffs’ legal theories.

They first claimed that only if the cups were filled to the brim, which they tended not to be, did they hold the promised 12 ounces, 16 ounces, or 20 ounces. However, the consumers’ own expert testified that in fact the capacity of each of the cups was 14.5 fl. oz. for a Tall, 18.5 for a Grande, and 22.8 for a Venti beverage — more than enough room for the promised amount.

The consumers’ lawyers next claimed that the foam and its height should not be used to calculate the total volume of the beverage. The judge disagreed saying that since the plaintiffs themselves say that lattes are composed of three ingredients, expresso, steamed milk, and milk foam, that all three ingredients count in determining the total measure.

The plaintiffs’ final theory was that the Starbucks recipe cards themselves don’t call for enough ingredients when added together to meet the promised size of the finished drinks. The judge pointed out the recipe calls for cold milk which expands when heated, and when coupled with the required foam, does in fact come out to the promised total.

The judge seemed to have ignored Handbook 133 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which says you have to first dissipate the foam, and then you measure the quantity of liquid in the cup. Under the judge’s reasoning, some smart aleck coffee seller could half fill a cup with foam and possibly get away with it.