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Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Over Kraft, Hormel Fat-Free Claims

  • Spence Cooper
  • April 28, 2011

South Carolina based Attorney Aaron Mayer has filed a class-action lawsuit against Oscar Mayer (owned by Kraft Foods) and Hormel Corporation, alleging that both companies have misled consumers by advertising deli meat as 98% fat free.

The case was filed in the US District Court Tampa Florida division on behalf of Brad Kuenzig and others. Mayer says he filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Tampa father who realized by looking at the back label, the meats were fattier than the front label advertised. Mayer says that practice is tricky and misleading.

“We know the labels were designed to sell these products. That they hope and expect consumers to rely on the claims they make on the labels,” Mayer said.

The labels are prominently displayed on the front of Oscar Mayer and Hormel lunch meat packages, claiming 95%, 97% and 98% fat free meats. “Often times it’s ten times as fat as they claim them to be. That’s why we filed the lawsuit,” Mayer said.

“If you turn the product over and look at the calories from fat, it says of those 50 calories, ten calories come from fat. You divide ten by 50 or double 50 and get 100 and figure out 20 calories from fat, and you see it’s 20% fat,” Mayer said.

Sydney Lindner, Kraft’s associate director, corporate affairs, told FoodNavigatorUSA: “This lawsuit is unfounded. We stand behind the statements on our labels, which are true and clear. What’s more, these labels are regulated and approved by the USDA prior to use. Our packaging contains information about calories from fat in the Nutrition Facts panel, under the Amount Per Serving section.

Mayer says the front label claim is the cause for concern. “USDA rules do require to disclaim how they’re making that claim, which none of them are doing,” Mayer said.

Mayer wants customers to be compensated if they bought the lunch meat because they thought it was low fat. He also wants both companies to change their labels. He says the lawsuit has nothing to do with anyone who became overweight or obese by eating the lunch meat.

Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Over Kraft, Hormel Fat-Free ClaimsKraft’s claim that their labels are regulated and approved by the USDA is pure comedy, since most savvy consumer advocates know US corporate food giants like Kraft are allowed to regulate themselves by design. Millions in corporate lobbying dollars are used to shape food policies favorable to corporations via US regulating agencies like the FDA and USDA.

But Kraft and Hormel aren’t the only companies guilty of misleading consumers with confusing and deceptive food labels. Every food item down the grocery isle uses confusing nutritional labels. In addition to terms like 98 percent fat-free, there’s terms like low fat, reduced fat, low saturated fat, or trans fat-free.

There is really no such thing as “fat-free”. Even vegetables and fruit contain some fat. For example, spinach has 0.3 grams fat and apples have 0.6 grams fat per 100 grams.

The claim “fat-free” is typically used to identify foods containing less than 0.5 grams of fat, or less than 1/2 gram of fat per per serving. But fat-free doesn’t mean calorie free. Foods labeled fat-free contain calories from carbohydrates or protein.

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