Teenagers really do know it all!!!

I heard a very interesting report on the news this morning and when I got into work I went and found the article on it.

A leading pharmaceutical company, a global one I might add, brought out a fruit juice in New Zealand that claimed to have the highest Vitamin C content compared to all the other competitors' products on the market. It further claimed that its black currant flavour had 7 times more Vitamin C content than oranges do. Now I studied food and I know that to make a claim on a label and to advertise a statement like that is a huge huge thing. The processes that you have to go through to get everything approved and validated by the Food and Drug Administration, in my opinion is far too much effort. It really really is a huge mission and it takes months and months of testing and experiments. So this company then advertises all over the press and it's label that it contains this ridiculous amount of Vitamin C and obviously their sales boom with our ever increasing health conscience consumers. Anyway two little high school girls, aged 14, decided to conduct a class science experiment to test the content of the Vitamin C this product claimed to contain and these two little lighties found that it had ZERO Vitamin C in it at all. They then took it to higher levels to get tested more efficiently and their findings were indeed correct. These two little budding Einsteins then went to this company and were ignored over and over and over again, until more influential people got involved and now they have been found guilty. They have been fined over US$160 000 and my best part is that they have to run adverts apologising and stating very clearly that their product does not in fact contain the vitamin content it so previously claimed to.

The more I think about the more it makes me wonder how on earth did the manage to make all those statements and claims in the first place? Does New Zealand not have the same strict marketing and advertising legislation regarding food labels as we do? And how can a leading pharmaceutical company actually do that in the first place?

Society has become so obsessed with healthy food products that your average joe now reads food labels too when making food choices. Do all these big companies now think that if they just slap a Heart Foundation or High in Vitamins and Minerals statement on their labels they will increase their sales volumes? As much as I thought that bus of a legislation, that I unfortunately had to study I might add, was such a mission and I hated it, I now realise just how necessary it actually is. I have a sneaky suspicion we might be hearing a lot more of these types of stories in the future after this little high school science experiment landed one of the world's leading pharmaceutical giants in the proverbial crap!!!

Have a PMS/CBS free day now

Sweet Pea