Ingredient Labels—Watch Out for This One Trick!

I wrote this up a few years ago but let it languish in my “thoughts” pile—clicking the “publish” button at last. Following up on yesterday’s comments about the US FDA’s proposal to change the food label by adding “added sugars” with a percent daily value is this below gem. I’m not sure it’s going to make much of a difference, although it’s a step in the right direction.

Naked Juice makes a “green machine” drink with “10 green turbo-nutrients”. Take a look at this screen grab of “the boost inside” a bottle—notice anything?

Hint: the qualities of the ingredients are given in mg. Not grams, but milligrams. 100 mg of broccoli = 0.1 g of broccoli.

Here is what 100 mg of broccoli looks like:

Screen Shot 2015-11-11 at 11.22.21 AM

This can’t really be right, can it?

Emails to Naked Juice below.

Hi, I purchased a bottle of ”Green Machine” today and was wondering about the ingredients used in it. On the back side of the label, it says the quantities of fruits and ”boosts” inside, such as 100mg of broccoli. Is that 100mg of straight-up, good ol’ fashioned broccoli, or 100mg of some sort of extract or flavor? Thanks!


Thanks for your inquiry about broccoli in Green Machine. The broccoli boost is from broccoli and is not a natural flavor extracted from broccoli.

We appreciate your business, Jeff, and I hope this information is helpful.

Theresa
Naked Juice Consumer Relations


Thanks for your reply! So to confirm, when the label says “50mg parsley”, that means there’s literally 50 mg of parsley in the bottle?


Thanks for your inquiry about the Green Machine label meaning that there are literally 50 mgs. of parsley in the bottle .

Yes, that’s correct! We follow all FDA labeling regulations and as you can see by the ingredients list, parsley and broccoli are actual ingredients in the Green Machine.


Sigh.

What am I missing?