Pop Tarts are so awful these days. Not only have they relentlessly cut the filling and icing, you can visibly see the progress as time goes on. Kellogg, I don't buy pop tarts for the crust!
I wish I had some frozen in time from the 80s/90s. How much did they really get worse vs how much are my kid rose tinted glasses clouding my judgement?
Your comment reminded of the time 10+ years ago when avid Cadbury Egg enthusiast B.J. Novak was on Conan and talked about how he thought Cadbury Eggs were shrinking and proved it by bringing out a Cadbury Cream egg he had around his house from years prior.
The biggest reason why Cadbury Eggs suck in the US is because the brand Cadbury is owned by Hersey and they make terrible chocolate. Get some in the UK the next time you're there.
Hate to break it to you, but since 2010 Cadbury UK has been owned by Mondelez International. The quality of Cadbury in Europe is declining, IMHO. (I never liked US Cadbury)
It must be a recent thing. A little over 3 years ago I had to eat a poptart dinner in a hotel while prepping for a demo. They were exactly what I remembered.
A college roommate said that his family received a box of Pop Tarts as part of a marketing test before they went on the market. After the first breakfast, they never ate more. That would have been about the time they came out, maybe 1965.
I did eat them, but at an age that I'd eat pretty much anything.
I have had them once or twice a year for the last 10 years as a junk food treat on wilderness backpacking trips. Other than the availability of certain flavors I haven’t noticed any change at all since I was a kid.
I have to imagine there has been reformulations on many items since the 80s based on cultural trends and food science.
We went through the "Low Fat" period where "fat" was removed and replaced with sugar. Probably less animal fats and more palm oil along the way or fried in peanut oil, etc...
There is a lot of foods that I had as a kid that I don't consume now nor even offer my kids.
Cancerous MBAs extracting as much profit as possible out of everything. They've perfected the art of re-examining everything and trimming as much fat as their customers can tolerate...and then they do it again.
If you're reading this as an Ivy League business school student, I hope you outlive your kids.
Lol, they are not getting cheaper. For decades, products are getting made with increasingly shittier parts. Big box items like fridges/washers/etc are nowhere near as reliable as our grandparent's were. They break just outside of manufacturer warranties. Selling a washer that lasts for years and years doesn't help YoY growth. Prices stay the same all the while they bilk you right under your nose (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180510-the-food-you-b...).
But if you want to go ahead and be a ignorant lemming like these companies want you to be, by all means do so; It doesn't change reality.
Well, my grandparents couldn't afford neither a fridge nor a washing machine at all and now you can get one with a week of minimum wage work. The problem is that as a consumer I can't distinguish between a washing machine that is expensive because it's built to last and a washing machine that's expensive because somebody liked a higher profit margin, so the market naturally converges to things that last exactly as long as they have to to avoid lawsuits.
Skip the paleo baloney (that crust ain't holding up) and just use a standard flour and butter shortcrust recipe. Super easy & fun to make. Chuck what you don't eat in the freezer for next month.
Mmm...back in the early 80's, frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts were my usual breakfast. I tried ~all the other flavors - and decided that those generally tasted worse, and had (at best, after reading the labels) no better nutrition.
(Edit: 's/that was/frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts were/' - to spell out just how "these are not health food" obvious the label on 'em is.)
this is the same recipe as 20 years ago. I actually used to work on redesigning the formulation and process for strawberry fillings. Nothing changed except your taste buds.
Took a few minutes to do some image searching, and the ingredients (listed in order of prevalence) have changed. As have several nutritional values. Many are the same, but many are not.
I'm talking about the amount of icing and filing rather than the taste of it. As a kid I remember there being much more icing coverage (less empty crust on the edges) and I remember being able to squeeze out a lot more filling than I can today.
Older pop-tarts had mostly rectangular icing but now one edge has a semi-circle shape. Coincidentally, this is the side they show cut off on the front of the box to show the filling.
There's a lot of food that has evolved to taste "like a thing" but man I swear it has evolved into it's own thing. That is just referencing something "like another food".
Yeah, lots of things don't really taste like the thing they're "supposed" to taste like. Like, I find most grape stuff approximates the taste of concord grapes... but how many people think of concords when they think of grapes?
Grenadine tastes more like cherry flavoring than pomegranates. Heck, cherry flavoring doesn't taste much like cherries either.
Wait, grenadine is supposed to be pomegranate flavored? I've been using it to make "cherry cokes" for decades... I prefer that flavor to the "real" cherry coke one.
"Grenade" is French for pomegranate. The problem is the most common brand "Rose's" is basically a cherry-flavored corn-syrup. Which, if that's what you want, is fine... but it's a far cry from proper grenadine.
Cocktail cherries are another cocktail ingredient with a similar insane drift from their origins - good quality Luxardos taste amazing and fruity and come packed in this deep purple fruity maraschino syrup, while supermarket Maraschino Cherries taste... well... awful.
source: I watched too many Youtube "How To Drink" videos on the history of cocktails at the start of the pandemic and ended up picking up a new hobby.
Just a warning: I tried following his recipe and it came out too dark. Still tastes fine, but it turns all my cocktails copper brown which isn't appetizing. So I just buy higher-end stuff now - still has the crisp "Red Dye 40" color but tastes like real fruit.
That's really funny because I do. I hate the sugary "frosting" crap so I only buy the unfrosted ones (for myself, that is). But honestly, the crust is the best part of the whole experience.
OTOH, I'd prefer pop-tarts if they were just frosting and crust with no filling at all. The one end where the frosting runs almost to the edge (I assume as an artifact of how it's applied) so you get just crust and frosting, is the best part of a pop tart.
Wouldn't be surprised if Kellogg's used a defense premised on people's low expectations of processed foods. Similar to how FoxNews hosts use defenses along the lines of "people know we don't tell the truth".
The gorilla would be much, much better than what they did - presenting the primary as some kind of fair process, with real rules, that anyone could have a chance in if they were a Democrat.
We don't have to get started on the effect putting two private organizations in charge of all high-level narrative since the 70s has done, but I fail to see how any of that excuses deceptively rigging a primary.
The primary process is how the privately-run political parties select their candidate. Their clear goal is the benefit of the party, not an exercise in democracy.
The same year saw the GOP hold a similar dislike for a particular candidate, with different results. Trump won, but the RNC certainly tried their best to prevent it for a while. No party primary in history is likely to have been entirely fair or impartial.
The parties want to have a primary, because it's better than running multiple candidates. And color me surprised that a political organization running a political election involves politics! :rolleyes:
EDIT: I want to clarify my response here. There's a trend within technology to discount anything that's based on social rather than some sort of more directly measurable outcome. In this case, the implication that there should be "rules" that are clear and followed to the letter, and absolutely nothing should happen outside of them.
Guess what! We live in a society, and anything involving more than one person also involves "politics". Social currency is as important, and one should pay attention to it. Otherwise one will consistently find that, no matter how good their technical justifications, they just get steamrolled by people who are both technically-correct enoughAND socially juiced.
The DNC is allowed to be deceptive, if they want. There's no legal basis for "the primaries have to be fair". The party is permitted to express a preference; they get to choose a platform, rules for the convention, how many debates to have, etc. They can favor a specific candidate, they can expel you from the party, they can do all sorts of things to move the scale.
That's kinda like saying Kellogg's can choose to be deceptive.
There's no legal basis for "strawberry Pop-Tarts need more than 2% strawberry". The company is permitted to use cancerous dyes and cheap ingredients, market the shit as wholegrain or whatever, etc.
The more I think about this, the more uncanny how similar our politics is to Pop-Tarts. They've no value or benefit to anyone but shareholders; they're marketed as responsible and balanced despite literally causing cancer; there's a few different flavours but the flavour is a meaningless deception dyed either red or blue.
Fox News has robust constitutional protections guarding it from those who would seek to measure the truth, and truth-seeking as a general practice is fraught with difficulty, generally ill suited for enforcement action in all but the most extreme cases such as those where it can be proved that the speaker knew otherwise.
The number and of strawberries going into a pastry is a lot easier to measure as a fact, and advertising that makes claims about strawberry content in the course of trade is not so protected.
That's just gaslighting about Fox News. I watch it just to know what the latest thing my older relatives are going to be outraged by, and they lie all the time! Defending it by saying that truth is unknowable is gaslighting.
>Fox News has robust constitutional protections guarding it from those who would seek to measure the truth, and truth-seeking as a general practice is fraught with difficulty
Yeah that's not this. I'm referring to people like Tucker Carlson who--in order to defend himself against charges of slander--essentially used the defense that he's known to lie/exaggerate, thus people know not to believe him.[0]
Would be akin to Kellogg's defending with, "people know processed foods are garbage".
Calling it yoghurt is such a lie. It’s sugar with some milk!
Not sure about the North American markets but plain old Natural/Greek yoghurt is a good way to avoid tons of added sugar. The majority of them in the UK are not desserts masquerading as sugar. They’re around 3-5% sugar from the milk.
In the US you have three options to avoid the high amounts of sugar in the mass products. You can buy proper natural/greek yogurts, they're fairly common, most grocery stores will have multiple options. You can get various low sugar yogurts. You can go with artificially flavored options, which will be 0-3g of sugar typically.
Kroger's (popular grocery store) house brand of vanilla yogurt is 4.6g of sugar per ounce. Their Greek version of that product is about half that sugar level.
Noosa vanilla bean yogurt is 4g of sugar per ounce. Their Lemon flavor is 4.3g of sugar per ounce.
Yoplait original strawberry is 3.1g of sugar per ounce.
Chobani greek yogurt with strawberries added is 2.5g of sugar per ounce.
Walmart's house brand of vanilla yogurt is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of plain greek yogurt is about 1g of total sugar per ounce, claiming no added sugars.
The Greek Gods plain Greek yogurt is 1.5g of total sugar per ounce.
Oikos plain greek yogurt is around 1.1g of total sugar per ounce.
Oikos sells a "triple zero" brand of supposedly greek yogurt that is popular at grocery stores in the US. It claims zero sugar, zero sugar added, zero artificial sweeteners. It lists Stevia as its fourth ingredient (I guess they get to claim that's simultaneously not sugar and not an artificial sweetener).
Chobani makes a zero sugar line, that claims to have zero sugar and no artificial sweeteners. However they list Allulose on the label, which is really just a sugar (D-psicose).
The Two Good brand claims 0.38g of sugar per ounce, they use Stevia as the sweetener.
The US has about 4,000 yogurt options to choose from. That might be nice but it actually makes it annoying to sort through and find the quality options in the pile.
It’s a stretch to say that yogurt is what companies like yoplait, danon and gogurt market. Sure they will claim it, but it’s pretty much false advertising for gelled sugar goop.
And due to the Greek yogurt fad it’s actually hard to get normal yogurt from any brand except for large containers.
It's sad to see something like Trimona plain yogurt get a bad rep by these sweet oily concoctions. Fun fact: iodine is a litmus test for starch in food, and you can see if yogurt has been thickened in an unnatural way.
This is a very interesting case, for a few reasons.
First, marketing: they cleverly declare that the product has "No high fructose corn syrup", while they added a lot of sugars (13g/26%!!). I'm looking forward the next product declaring "no added cyanide" :)
The second is classifications of sugar. The "carbohydrates" term is too generic to ascertain the type(s) (and associated health impact); for example, 100g of dry beans are certainly a good meal, but in terms of labelling, they're around 90% of "carbohydrates" (one needs to look at the "sugars" label).
On this product label, around 8g are not "sugars", in other words, not simple carbohydrates, but I don't understand where they come from, based on the ingredients; they could be starch, but the label says <1% of corn starch. I wonder if "modified corn starch" classifies as "not corn starch", which would explain the missing 8g.
I would highly recommend the kind with only 2 ingredients that separates at room temperature. Yeah, it sucks to have to stir it, but you only need to do that once per jar if you put it in the fridge afterward. Alternatively, just eat a couple handfuls of minimally processed peanuts or whatever other nuts/legumes you prefer along with the less healthy stuff. They improve the nutrition value of almost any meal (provided you're not allergic, of course).
> The suit filed by the Illinois woman focuses on her perception that strawberries "protect your heart, increase HDL (good) cholesterol, lower your blood pressure and guard against cancer."
This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
"I thought Pop Tarts would prevent cancer" is silly.
Agreed - it seems pretty obvious to me that "strawberry poptarts" means "strawberry _flavored_ poptarts". I doubt most reasonable people would interpret this as indicating strawberries must be a primary ingredient.
This is especially obvious when you consider their other flavors. Imagine the alternative HN title "Law Firm Sues Kellogg for Not Enough S'Mores in S'Mores Pop-Tarts".
> I doubt most reasonable people would interpret this as indicating strawberries must be a primary ingredient.
This is only because you have become accustomed to industrial food production practices. Because you've been tricked early in life and learned that 'strawberry' doesn't mean the berry and you've just normalized this practice.
If you ever do any cooking of your own you'll know that things like Strawberry Jam is made from taking a pot of strawberries and adding other ingredients. It very clearly is not taking 1 strawberry and adding a pot of strawberry like flavorings.
The real issue is we have crappy consumer protection laws. Companies should be forced to provide truthful advertising practices. E.g. 'Simulated Strawberry Flavor Poptarts' (don't hide the simulated label in tiny print that nobody notices until after the purchase). Another major problem is downsizing packaging, e.g. Orange Juice in a standard size container that is filled only to 90% capacity.
Do you think that making a comparison between industrial food production processes and what goes on in a person's kitchen is valid?
I could probably grab a box of pop tarts of whatever flavor I have in my pantry and check the ingredients list, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be misleading to any reasonable person.
By your phrasing on industrial food production it sounds like you believe there is an inherent requirement for industrial processes to use cheap ingredients and simultaneously market those ingredients as something else. That clearly isn't the case, it's a business decision to maximize profit, not something fundamental to industrial food production.
And yes by analogy if I buy 'ground beef' I know it will be 100% ground beef because we have laws ensuring that is the case. However if I buy Shepards Pie & the packaging in large, bold text informs me that it is made with beef, I have to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging for small print that tells me the beef is actually 98% soy and 2% beef then I feel that's misleading.
As a consumer I don't know why one is protected while the other isn't, but I've learned through buying really bad products that I need to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging because some companies are fine hiding the truth.
So really the suit is about truth in advertising and exposing that we have a very low bar to be honest in consumer products.
This is a false equivalence - strawberry poptarts don't have have "large bold text" claiming they are made with strawberries.
I totally agree that "made with X!" adverts when X is actually 1% of the final product are misleading and should be illegal (maybe they are already, and it's just not enforced well?) - but I do think there's a difference between describing flavor and ingredients, and poptarts are pretty obviously the former.
That they have to tell the truth in the ingredients list does not give them a license to lie everywhere else.
How could a competitor benefit from using an honest quantity of real strawberries, if the only place they can effectively advertise that is in the tiny ingredients list that nobody reads?
Then pop-tarts would just add some misleadingly similar but not technically wrong crap to theirs, like "100% pure natural syrup" on bottles that are definitely intended to trick you into thinking they're maple syrup, but aren't, which is a thing I've seen in the wild (Cracker Barrel syrup).
Food labelling laws need an overhaul. And some serious teeth.
That statement says the strawberries are 100% real, it does nothing to exclude the addition of other ingredients or artificial red flavoring added elsewhere.
You may think I'm being asinine, but I'm not. I've been fooled by that language before.
it seems pretty obvious to me that "strawberry poptarts" means "strawberry _flavored_ poptarts".
"To me" being a native English speaker who has grown up in a culture where "strawberry" means a strawberry hasn't ever been within ten miles of that box of pop tarts? I mean, is that how far we've come? Just assume that what's literally printed on the box is a scam?
> it seems pretty obvious to me that "strawberry poptarts" means "strawberry _flavored_ poptarts".
The frequency with which things without significant amounts of X but with some X-based or simulating flavor are labelled “X-flavored Y” rather than “X Y” suggests that it is not at all obvious or standard usage that the latter means the same as the former.
OTOH, mandatory food labelling laws are spotty on where they concretely prohibit the latter labelling.
On the gripping hand, the effect od the aggregate of those laws is important in shaping the context in which the package at issue is read.
> Imagine the alternative HN title "Law Firm Sues Kellogg for Not Enough S'Mores in S'Mores Pop-Tarts".
It would be more akin to them advertising specific ingredients in S’Mores but the food stuffs not resembling S’mores in any form. It’s not as good an example as advertising strawberry but selling a predominately apple/pear artificially coloring it like strawberry. What’s the purpose of all this bait and switch? Allegedly so they can charge more than for apple/pear pop tarts.
I know you can file suit for pretty much anything, but at some point, but what expectation is there for the law to rule based on a woman's perception? It's quite a big leap to prove damages from "I think strawberries will do X..." to "There aren't enough strawberries in this product to do X!". They don't even seem to be claiming that Kellogg contributed to this perception!
The article talks about proper labeling and marketing, which is all well and good, but then, isn't that the jurisdiction of the FDA?
This seems like a waste of time, but I guess if you file 2-3 $5MM lawsuits per week, you're bound to eventually win one of them. It just shows ways to exploit this legal system, I suppose.
I keep hoping that somebody will push back on this sort of lawsuit, by asking the court to appoint a trustee or conservator to manage the life of the plaintiff - because clearly they are not capable of understanding the Real World(tm) well enough to do that themselves.
>"I thought Pop Tarts would prevent cancer" is silly.
This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
Clearly you didn’t read the Complaint, only this article which is written on behalf of the food industry and an obvious attempt to publicly attack both a singled out woman that is part of a class of plaintiffs and the law firm representing the plaintiff. It’s the same reason to this day people talk negatively about a woman suing McDonald’s and winning $1M after being burned by hot coffee, because McDonald’s sought to mock her claims publicly and it is a successful tactic. It’s hardly ever mentioned the McDonald’s in question purposely served coffee significantly hotter than industry standards permit, failed to attach the lid to her coffee resulting in 3rd degree burns to her crotch area requiring skin graphs, and was only required to pay he a single days worth of coffee sales.
Just look at the bs title of the article, “law firm sues…”. Then the very first sentence charges the law firm with being a “litigious law firm.”
What a joke, a law firm isn’t suing Kellogg, a law firm represents plaintiffs in a class action law suit (which is rare because it requires overcoming a legal burden of certifying the class). It’s this class of plaintiffs suing Kellogg not a “litigious law firm.”
The lawsuit, in addition to damages, is seeking the product be properly labeled. While the truth about Kellogg selling shit products to consumers may be obvious to you (and will ironically be one of their defenses), Kellogg’s labels are allegedly below the industry standard of competing toaster pastries that make disclosures of the artificial fillers. So it’s maybe not so ridiculous this woman and class of plaintiffs thought a strawberry pop tart might include the health benefits of…strawberries. After all if they didn’t then pop tart could have easily labeled their product the same way as all the other strawberry toaster pastries. It’s a far cry away from trying to paint a single plaintiff of a class action lawsuit as a wacko that thinks pop tarts prevents cancer, but hey it’s why these anti-plaintiff articles are written by industry, corporations advertise and mislabel products to begin with…it works on people.
Well I only mentioned the McDonald’s case because of the similar public relations attack by the food industry, you are trying to distinguish the damages.
If you actually read the complaint then you wouldn’t try comparing the damages resulting from a negligence case and this case for:
1. Violation of the NY consumer statue act;
2. Negligent misrepresentation;
3. Breach of implied merchantability; and
4. Unjust enrichment.
Also please cite from the complaint exactly where you got you initial quotation that the plaintiffs “thought pop tarts would prevent cancer.” Or why you would have made that up after reading the complaint?
> The suit filed by the Illinois woman focuses on her perception that strawberries "protect your heart, increase HDL (good) cholesterol, lower your blood pressure and guard against cancer." But the filling actually contains more dried pears and apples, the suit contends, and she was expecting the health benefits associated with strawberries.
Anybody who actually believes that eating unfrosted strawberry Pop Tarts, with 190 calories, 12g of added sugar, 180mg of sodium and 3g of saturated fat in each pastry, is going to be good for cardiovascular health and guard against cancer should be laughed out of court and ordered to complete a basic nutrition course.
Anybody that really cared about getting their fruit intake from processed food would be looking at the ingredients. Here's the ingredients from the "healthier" whole grain poptarts:
whole wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, enriched flour, dextrose, soybean and palm oil, bleached wheat flour, polydextrose, glycerin. contains 2% or less of fructose, wheat starch, calcium carbonate, salt, leavening, vegetable juice for color, dried pears, dried apples, dried strawberries, sodium stearoyl lactylate, citric acid, modified wheat starch, datem, cornstarch, gelatin, xanthan gum, brown rice syrup, paprika extract color, soy lecithin, vitamin a palmitate, niacinamide, reduced iron, vitamin b6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin b2 (riboflavin), vitamin b1 (thiamin hydrochloride).
Less than 2% contains any fruit at all, and there's more salt than fruit in that 2%. Her lawsuit seems focused on the fact that there's more pear and apples than strawberries, which seems irrelevant given how little fruit is present at all.
2% of a 48g Pop Tart is less than a gram, an average strawberry weighs 25g. She could slice up a single strawberry and eat a sliver each day for a month and consume more strawberry than she'd get by eating a Pop Tart each day.
The ingredients list says it has less than 2% of a group of items, including strawberries. That's not misrepresentation, that's wishful thinking on the plaintiff's part.
30 point font it says 'Strawberry', the packaging has pictures of more fresh strawberries than are actually in the product. Yet in 8 point font on the backside it says strawberries don't make a substantial part of the product. Isn't that the misrepresentation?
Why don't we agree to call it what it actually is 'Red Flavor Poptarts' and then the suit can be dismissed.
I mean if I make strawberry cheesecake I’m sure by weight less than 2% of the cake is strawberries. I’m not really sure how you fix the labeling requirements so that everything ever isn’t “strawberry flavored” or “red.”
You are needlessly blurring the issue. Forget the cheesecake. Focus on the Strawberry topping. A homemade strawberry topping will be strawberry, sugar, and starch or gelatin.
BUT, the strawberry topping from your frozen foods section will likely be 3 strawberries sliced up large enough so the consumer thinks it's just like homemade because they see the fruit, and then a 98% of industrial red flavoring.
There is very little incentive not to use strawberry flavor because both products can be sold as the same. Would it really be so wrong to require more honesty in what we buy? When choosing a product wouldn't it be nice to choose between one with 98% red flavor versus one with 98% strawberry?
You don't need to require more disclosure. Those products that want to deliver the real mccoy can just state it: "10% strawberries, by volume of ingredients before cooking", or something. You can even have a youtube video showing you making it, with a celeb ooing and awing. The people who care enough to pay for it will do so.
This case sounds like people wanting a free upgrade.
That's already been settled. Detailed ingredients labels are compulsory, because consumers wanted details. Now the onus is on the consumer to read the detailed ingredients labels that they, themselves asked for and received. It doesn't matter what the front of the box says, or in which font it says it.
> It doesn't matter what the front of the box says
Don't you see that is the problem? We have trademark laws to protect companies from confusing consumers. E.g. If a cola company comes even close to confusing a consumer that their product is 'coke' then it gets sued.
However, when consumers are routinely confused by what's in a product or have become so accustomed that the picture on the box is not actually what is in the box then this audience seems to think that is okay.
I find the difference in opinions between business protection and consumer protection astounding. We've been massively propagandized by capitalism.
Go look at the packaging that says 'made with real fruit' & has pictures of strawberries. There are millions of Americans that see that and have decided that it's a healthier choice than the instant oatmeal (without any fruit) sitting next to the poptart.
We've all been told to eat more fruits and veggies, so isn't this a healthier choice?
There are a lot of people who eat a lot of unhealthy things under a belief that they are healthy. I'd argue that poptarts, as you say, are probably one of the least bad offenders in this area, but as one example: the entire children marketed breakfast food industry is terrible.
> A Washington Examiner story said the law firm has frequently filed lawsuits against major food companies, to the tune of two to three fraud suits per week during the first half of 2021. Sheehan & Associates has also filed the highest number of food-related fraud lawsuits in the last two years.
IANAL. Is there any way for courts to take action against law firms who repeatedly sue frivolously, in the US or beyond?
I know this sounds like a frivolous lawsuit, but at the same time, requiring companies to have more real fruit in food also doesn't strike me as a bad thing.
The problem is that strawberries themselves would probably fail the test of being strawberries unless you want to do some really funny accounting like “sure it’s literally just water or sugar, but it came from a strawberry so it counts as strawberry.”
If the filling is 2% strawberry proteins, which is the not water and sugar part of the berry that actually tastes like strawberries, then that’s more than real strawberries.
While this is technically true, it obscures the reality of the matter. I doubt that woman woke up that day and decided in earnest she wanted to sue Kellogs over a poptart.
What likely happened is that Sheehan & Associates decided they wanted to try their hand at a class action lawsuit on the matter.
They need an actual plaintiff for doing that, just one person who, they will argue in court, is representative of anyone who ever bought a pop tart. They're not allowed to just solicit that person directly, so what they'll do is claim that they are "investigating the lack of strawberries in pop tart" and advertise heavily asking for help in their "investigation".
Once they get someone in their office or on the phone, it's easy to lead them towards the filing of a lawsuit (for which they can get paid).
The article does an unusually good job at showing scepticism over what is clearly lawyer-led and not plaintiff-led litigation, down to the title: "law firm sues".
Is this necessarily a problem? I don't have the resources to litigate a multi-billion dollar company over their dishonest practices. But if someone knocked on my door and said they'd take all the financial risk I'd be all over the opportunity to help correct industry practices.
The problem is that it entices people who couldn't have cared less before money was dangled in front of them to participate in the lawsuit for that reason only.
Someone at a law firm deciding that "hey, we could make a lot of money suing Kellogg, now let's go find a reason to do it" is not what I'd consider an appropriate use of the legal system.
Yeh, I agree with you. But this is the system we have.
Ideally we'd have a consumer protection group that would have raised the issue decades ago. But, it seems a vast majority of Americans don't trust government to regulate and elect officials that weaken these institutions. Instead they favor letting market do it, and that's how we got here.
Regular strawberry pop-tart eater here (~monthly basis). Obviously understand pop-tarts aren't "healthy", but definitely expected them to be more than 1% strawberry.
Using dried strawberries means they strawberries are concentrated. The apple and pear likely add a 'fruity' flavor that the strawberries either don't have or lose when dried. Regardless, the main ingredient of the filling is corn syrup and sugar, so complaining about the pear and apple is nonsensical.
As some others have mentioned, expecting any sort of health benefit from an ultra-processed candy is pretty ridiculous.
Though I'd also love if Kellogg were dragged across the coals for selling candy to children for breakfast.
>As some others have mentioned, expecting any sort of health benefit from an ultra-processed candy is pretty ridiculous.
Yeah. Pop-Tarts are my go-to example for my rule of "if you eat something unhealthy it should taste correspondingly good enough to make up for the hit to health". They fail it, badly. They're unhealthy and don't taste nearly good enough to make up for it.
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Pic: https://twitter.com/cicada3301_kig/status/131419416269930905...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlXLCrzpToo
(Yes, the eggs have shrunk)
I did eat them, but at an age that I'd eat pretty much anything.
We went through the "Low Fat" period where "fat" was removed and replaced with sugar. Probably less animal fats and more palm oil along the way or fried in peanut oil, etc...
There is a lot of foods that I had as a kid that I don't consume now nor even offer my kids.
If you're reading this as an Ivy League business school student, I hope you outlive your kids.
Damn you MBAs!!! <shakes fist at air>
But if you want to go ahead and be a ignorant lemming like these companies want you to be, by all means do so; It doesn't change reality.
https://www.punchfork.com/recipe/Paleo-Strawberry-Homemade-P...
(Edit: 's/that was/frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts were/' - to spell out just how "these are not health food" obvious the label on 'em is.)
Nothing changed, but you redesigned the formulation? What does that mean?
Changing the ratio of filling/ crust/ icing would change the taste
Older pop-tarts had mostly rectangular icing but now one edge has a semi-circle shape. Coincidentally, this is the side they show cut off on the front of the box to show the filling.
Grenadine tastes more like cherry flavoring than pomegranates. Heck, cherry flavoring doesn't taste much like cherries either.
Cocktail cherries are another cocktail ingredient with a similar insane drift from their origins - good quality Luxardos taste amazing and fruity and come packed in this deep purple fruity maraschino syrup, while supermarket Maraschino Cherries taste... well... awful.
source: I watched too many Youtube "How To Drink" videos on the history of cocktails at the start of the pandemic and ended up picking up a new hobby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTF7QkIkns8
That's really funny because I do. I hate the sugary "frosting" crap so I only buy the unfrosted ones (for myself, that is). But honestly, the crust is the best part of the whole experience.
Wouldn't be surprised if Kellogg's used a defense premised on people's low expectations of processed foods. Similar to how FoxNews hosts use defenses along the lines of "people know we don't tell the truth".
- https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-was...
We don't have to get started on the effect putting two private organizations in charge of all high-level narrative since the 70s has done, but I fail to see how any of that excuses deceptively rigging a primary.
The same year saw the GOP hold a similar dislike for a particular candidate, with different results. Trump won, but the RNC certainly tried their best to prevent it for a while. No party primary in history is likely to have been entirely fair or impartial.
EDIT: I want to clarify my response here. There's a trend within technology to discount anything that's based on social rather than some sort of more directly measurable outcome. In this case, the implication that there should be "rules" that are clear and followed to the letter, and absolutely nothing should happen outside of them.
Guess what! We live in a society, and anything involving more than one person also involves "politics". Social currency is as important, and one should pay attention to it. Otherwise one will consistently find that, no matter how good their technical justifications, they just get steamrolled by people who are both technically-correct enough AND socially juiced.
Selling pop tarts to everyone claiming something is in it that provides health benefits when it is hardly there is a different thing.
The DNC is allowed to be deceptive, if they want. There's no legal basis for "the primaries have to be fair". The party is permitted to express a preference; they get to choose a platform, rules for the convention, how many debates to have, etc. They can favor a specific candidate, they can expel you from the party, they can do all sorts of things to move the scale.
There's no legal basis for "strawberry Pop-Tarts need more than 2% strawberry". The company is permitted to use cancerous dyes and cheap ingredients, market the shit as wholegrain or whatever, etc.
The more I think about this, the more uncanny how similar our politics is to Pop-Tarts. They've no value or benefit to anyone but shareholders; they're marketed as responsible and balanced despite literally causing cancer; there's a few different flavours but the flavour is a meaningless deception dyed either red or blue.
A party running their own primaries is not at all like selling pop tarts.
1. It is standard practice at dismissal phase to proceed is if the plaintiff’s claims were correct.
2. The case was dismissed because political rhetoric is not enforceable in court.
The number and of strawberries going into a pastry is a lot easier to measure as a fact, and advertising that makes claims about strawberry content in the course of trade is not so protected.
Yeah that's not this. I'm referring to people like Tucker Carlson who--in order to defend himself against charges of slander--essentially used the defense that he's known to lie/exaggerate, thus people know not to believe him.[0]
Would be akin to Kellogg's defending with, "people know processed foods are garbage".
[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...
Edit: Here's the ad I had in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlqFplfTojA
And here's an article form the case they presented the defense that no one would think it's healthy: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-dark-side-of-vitaminw_b_6...
As an example, https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-straw... has 27g carbohydrates. An 8oz Coke has 26g.
Not sure about the North American markets but plain old Natural/Greek yoghurt is a good way to avoid tons of added sugar. The majority of them in the UK are not desserts masquerading as sugar. They’re around 3-5% sugar from the milk.
Kroger's (popular grocery store) house brand of vanilla yogurt is 4.6g of sugar per ounce. Their Greek version of that product is about half that sugar level.
Noosa vanilla bean yogurt is 4g of sugar per ounce. Their Lemon flavor is 4.3g of sugar per ounce.
Yoplait original strawberry is 3.1g of sugar per ounce.
Chobani greek yogurt with strawberries added is 2.5g of sugar per ounce.
Walmart's house brand of vanilla yogurt is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of plain greek yogurt is about 1g of total sugar per ounce, claiming no added sugars.
The Greek Gods plain Greek yogurt is 1.5g of total sugar per ounce.
Oikos plain greek yogurt is around 1.1g of total sugar per ounce.
Oikos sells a "triple zero" brand of supposedly greek yogurt that is popular at grocery stores in the US. It claims zero sugar, zero sugar added, zero artificial sweeteners. It lists Stevia as its fourth ingredient (I guess they get to claim that's simultaneously not sugar and not an artificial sweetener).
Chobani makes a zero sugar line, that claims to have zero sugar and no artificial sweeteners. However they list Allulose on the label, which is really just a sugar (D-psicose).
The Two Good brand claims 0.38g of sugar per ounce, they use Stevia as the sweetener.
The US has about 4,000 yogurt options to choose from. That might be nice but it actually makes it annoying to sort through and find the quality options in the pile.
And due to the Greek yogurt fad it’s actually hard to get normal yogurt from any brand except for large containers.
First, marketing: they cleverly declare that the product has "No high fructose corn syrup", while they added a lot of sugars (13g/26%!!). I'm looking forward the next product declaring "no added cyanide" :)
The second is classifications of sugar. The "carbohydrates" term is too generic to ascertain the type(s) (and associated health impact); for example, 100g of dry beans are certainly a good meal, but in terms of labelling, they're around 90% of "carbohydrates" (one needs to look at the "sugars" label).
On this product label, around 8g are not "sugars", in other words, not simple carbohydrates, but I don't understand where they come from, based on the ingredients; they could be starch, but the label says <1% of corn starch. I wonder if "modified corn starch" classifies as "not corn starch", which would explain the missing 8g.
One pop tart with peanut butter is better than two pop tarts
I would highly recommend the kind with only 2 ingredients that separates at room temperature. Yeah, it sucks to have to stir it, but you only need to do that once per jar if you put it in the fridge afterward. Alternatively, just eat a couple handfuls of minimally processed peanuts or whatever other nuts/legumes you prefer along with the less healthy stuff. They improve the nutrition value of almost any meal (provided you're not allergic, of course).
Try turning it over and put butter on it while hot. Yum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlsFgDjyePc
This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
"I thought Pop Tarts would prevent cancer" is silly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/03/05/p...
This is especially obvious when you consider their other flavors. Imagine the alternative HN title "Law Firm Sues Kellogg for Not Enough S'Mores in S'Mores Pop-Tarts".
This is only because you have become accustomed to industrial food production practices. Because you've been tricked early in life and learned that 'strawberry' doesn't mean the berry and you've just normalized this practice.
If you ever do any cooking of your own you'll know that things like Strawberry Jam is made from taking a pot of strawberries and adding other ingredients. It very clearly is not taking 1 strawberry and adding a pot of strawberry like flavorings.
The real issue is we have crappy consumer protection laws. Companies should be forced to provide truthful advertising practices. E.g. 'Simulated Strawberry Flavor Poptarts' (don't hide the simulated label in tiny print that nobody notices until after the purchase). Another major problem is downsizing packaging, e.g. Orange Juice in a standard size container that is filled only to 90% capacity.
I could probably grab a box of pop tarts of whatever flavor I have in my pantry and check the ingredients list, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be misleading to any reasonable person.
And yes by analogy if I buy 'ground beef' I know it will be 100% ground beef because we have laws ensuring that is the case. However if I buy Shepards Pie & the packaging in large, bold text informs me that it is made with beef, I have to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging for small print that tells me the beef is actually 98% soy and 2% beef then I feel that's misleading.
As a consumer I don't know why one is protected while the other isn't, but I've learned through buying really bad products that I need to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging because some companies are fine hiding the truth.
So really the suit is about truth in advertising and exposing that we have a very low bar to be honest in consumer products.
I totally agree that "made with X!" adverts when X is actually 1% of the final product are misleading and should be illegal (maybe they are already, and it's just not enforced well?) - but I do think there's a difference between describing flavor and ingredients, and poptarts are pretty obviously the former.
How could a competitor benefit from using an honest quantity of real strawberries, if the only place they can effectively advertise that is in the tiny ingredients list that nobody reads?
"Filling made from 100% real strawberries!"
Already a common marketing construction, even. Apple juice is often sold with this bit of puffery.
Food labelling laws need an overhaul. And some serious teeth.
That statement says the strawberries are 100% real, it does nothing to exclude the addition of other ingredients or artificial red flavoring added elsewhere.
You may think I'm being asinine, but I'm not. I've been fooled by that language before.
"To me" being a native English speaker who has grown up in a culture where "strawberry" means a strawberry hasn't ever been within ten miles of that box of pop tarts? I mean, is that how far we've come? Just assume that what's literally printed on the box is a scam?
The frequency with which things without significant amounts of X but with some X-based or simulating flavor are labelled “X-flavored Y” rather than “X Y” suggests that it is not at all obvious or standard usage that the latter means the same as the former.
OTOH, mandatory food labelling laws are spotty on where they concretely prohibit the latter labelling.
On the gripping hand, the effect od the aggregate of those laws is important in shaping the context in which the package at issue is read.
It would be more akin to them advertising specific ingredients in S’Mores but the food stuffs not resembling S’mores in any form. It’s not as good an example as advertising strawberry but selling a predominately apple/pear artificially coloring it like strawberry. What’s the purpose of all this bait and switch? Allegedly so they can charge more than for apple/pear pop tarts.
The article talks about proper labeling and marketing, which is all well and good, but then, isn't that the jurisdiction of the FDA?
This seems like a waste of time, but I guess if you file 2-3 $5MM lawsuits per week, you're bound to eventually win one of them. It just shows ways to exploit this legal system, I suppose.
Now that's just marketing I know but at some point it's a lie. How many strawberries? How close to the poptart do you have to wave them?
I keep hoping that somebody will push back on this sort of lawsuit, by asking the court to appoint a trustee or conservator to manage the life of the plaintiff - because clearly they are not capable of understanding the Real World(tm) well enough to do that themselves.
This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
Clearly you didn’t read the Complaint, only this article which is written on behalf of the food industry and an obvious attempt to publicly attack both a singled out woman that is part of a class of plaintiffs and the law firm representing the plaintiff. It’s the same reason to this day people talk negatively about a woman suing McDonald’s and winning $1M after being burned by hot coffee, because McDonald’s sought to mock her claims publicly and it is a successful tactic. It’s hardly ever mentioned the McDonald’s in question purposely served coffee significantly hotter than industry standards permit, failed to attach the lid to her coffee resulting in 3rd degree burns to her crotch area requiring skin graphs, and was only required to pay he a single days worth of coffee sales.
Just look at the bs title of the article, “law firm sues…”. Then the very first sentence charges the law firm with being a “litigious law firm.”
What a joke, a law firm isn’t suing Kellogg, a law firm represents plaintiffs in a class action law suit (which is rare because it requires overcoming a legal burden of certifying the class). It’s this class of plaintiffs suing Kellogg not a “litigious law firm.”
The lawsuit, in addition to damages, is seeking the product be properly labeled. While the truth about Kellogg selling shit products to consumers may be obvious to you (and will ironically be one of their defenses), Kellogg’s labels are allegedly below the industry standard of competing toaster pastries that make disclosures of the artificial fillers. So it’s maybe not so ridiculous this woman and class of plaintiffs thought a strawberry pop tart might include the health benefits of…strawberries. After all if they didn’t then pop tart could have easily labeled their product the same way as all the other strawberry toaster pastries. It’s a far cry away from trying to paint a single plaintiff of a class action lawsuit as a wacko that thinks pop tarts prevents cancer, but hey it’s why these anti-plaintiff articles are written by industry, corporations advertise and mislabel products to begin with…it works on people.
The claimed harm in this case is they wouldn't have paid $4 for Pop Tarts if they'd realized they were less healthy.
(Yes, I read the complaint.)
If you actually read the complaint then you wouldn’t try comparing the damages resulting from a negligence case and this case for:
1. Violation of the NY consumer statue act;
2. Negligent misrepresentation;
3. Breach of implied merchantability; and
4. Unjust enrichment.
Also please cite from the complaint exactly where you got you initial quotation that the plaintiffs “thought pop tarts would prevent cancer.” Or why you would have made that up after reading the complaint?
Anybody who actually believes that eating unfrosted strawberry Pop Tarts, with 190 calories, 12g of added sugar, 180mg of sodium and 3g of saturated fat in each pastry, is going to be good for cardiovascular health and guard against cancer should be laughed out of court and ordered to complete a basic nutrition course.
whole wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, enriched flour, dextrose, soybean and palm oil, bleached wheat flour, polydextrose, glycerin. contains 2% or less of fructose, wheat starch, calcium carbonate, salt, leavening, vegetable juice for color, dried pears, dried apples, dried strawberries, sodium stearoyl lactylate, citric acid, modified wheat starch, datem, cornstarch, gelatin, xanthan gum, brown rice syrup, paprika extract color, soy lecithin, vitamin a palmitate, niacinamide, reduced iron, vitamin b6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin b2 (riboflavin), vitamin b1 (thiamin hydrochloride).
Less than 2% contains any fruit at all, and there's more salt than fruit in that 2%. Her lawsuit seems focused on the fact that there's more pear and apples than strawberries, which seems irrelevant given how little fruit is present at all.
2% of a 48g Pop Tart is less than a gram, an average strawberry weighs 25g. She could slice up a single strawberry and eat a sliver each day for a month and consume more strawberry than she'd get by eating a Pop Tart each day.
Dried fruit is drastically more concentrated than fresh fruit. By weight, fruits are largely water.
"2% or less" means each individual ingredient is under that threshold, not the sum of them.
"2% or less" also means that the following ingredients do not necessarily need to be ordered by weight.
Even if they are listed by weight, there are three dried fruits and only one salt. The sum of their weights could easily outweigh the salt.
See § 101.4 (2):
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2006-title21-vol2/xm...
Reasonable Consumer Would Know “Crunchberries” Are Not Real, Judge Rules[0]
Yet Another Lawsuit About the Lack of Fruit in “Froot Loops”[1]
“Hint of Lime” Case: It’s Not Crunch Berries, But It’s Close[2]
[0]: https://loweringthebar.net/2009/06/reasonable-consumer-would...
[1]: https://loweringthebar.net/2010/04/yet-another-lawsuit-claim...
[2]: https://loweringthebar.net/2021/06/hint-of-lime-case-its-not...
Why don't we agree to call it what it actually is 'Red Flavor Poptarts' and then the suit can be dismissed.
BUT, the strawberry topping from your frozen foods section will likely be 3 strawberries sliced up large enough so the consumer thinks it's just like homemade because they see the fruit, and then a 98% of industrial red flavoring.
There is very little incentive not to use strawberry flavor because both products can be sold as the same. Would it really be so wrong to require more honesty in what we buy? When choosing a product wouldn't it be nice to choose between one with 98% red flavor versus one with 98% strawberry?
This case sounds like people wanting a free upgrade.
Don't you see that is the problem? We have trademark laws to protect companies from confusing consumers. E.g. If a cola company comes even close to confusing a consumer that their product is 'coke' then it gets sued.
However, when consumers are routinely confused by what's in a product or have become so accustomed that the picture on the box is not actually what is in the box then this audience seems to think that is okay.
I find the difference in opinions between business protection and consumer protection astounding. We've been massively propagandized by capitalism.
We've all been told to eat more fruits and veggies, so isn't this a healthier choice?
IANAL. Is there any way for courts to take action against law firms who repeatedly sue frivolously, in the US or beyond?
If the filling is 2% strawberry proteins, which is the not water and sugar part of the berry that actually tastes like strawberries, then that’s more than real strawberries.
While this is technically true, it obscures the reality of the matter. I doubt that woman woke up that day and decided in earnest she wanted to sue Kellogs over a poptart.
What likely happened is that Sheehan & Associates decided they wanted to try their hand at a class action lawsuit on the matter.
They need an actual plaintiff for doing that, just one person who, they will argue in court, is representative of anyone who ever bought a pop tart. They're not allowed to just solicit that person directly, so what they'll do is claim that they are "investigating the lack of strawberries in pop tart" and advertise heavily asking for help in their "investigation".
Once they get someone in their office or on the phone, it's easy to lead them towards the filing of a lawsuit (for which they can get paid).
The article does an unusually good job at showing scepticism over what is clearly lawyer-led and not plaintiff-led litigation, down to the title: "law firm sues".
Someone at a law firm deciding that "hey, we could make a lot of money suing Kellogg, now let's go find a reason to do it" is not what I'd consider an appropriate use of the legal system.
Ideally we'd have a consumer protection group that would have raised the issue decades ago. But, it seems a vast majority of Americans don't trust government to regulate and elect officials that weaken these institutions. Instead they favor letting market do it, and that's how we got here.
Here's a photo from the box in my pantry: https://i.imgur.com/5p4RvHD.jpeg
As some others have mentioned, expecting any sort of health benefit from an ultra-processed candy is pretty ridiculous.
Though I'd also love if Kellogg were dragged across the coals for selling candy to children for breakfast.
Yeah. Pop-Tarts are my go-to example for my rule of "if you eat something unhealthy it should taste correspondingly good enough to make up for the hit to health". They fail it, badly. They're unhealthy and don't taste nearly good enough to make up for it.
Seems like a food that is mainly flour, sugar, sugar, sugar, preservatives and some filler / jam (sugar).