Guacamole lawsuit: Where's the avocado?
Posted November 30 2006, 8:24 AM EST
LOS ANGELES -- Wholly guacamole?
That's the issue in a fraud lawsuit filed Wednesday against Kraft Foods, Inc., by a Los Angeles woman who claims the company's avocado dip doesn't qualify as guacamole.
"It just didn't taste avocadoey," said Brenda Lifsey, who used Kraft Dips Guacamole in a three-layer dip last year. "I looked at the ingredients and found there was almost no avocado in it."
She is seeking unspecified damages and a Superior Court order barring Kraft from calling its dip guacamole. Her suit seeks class-action status.
The Kraft product contains modified food starch, coconut and soybean oils, corn syrup and food coloring. It is less than 2 percent avocado, which in traditional recipes is the main ingredient of the Mexican dish.
The government doesn't have any requirements on how much avocado a product must contain to be labeled guacamole, said Michael Herndon, a spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft said it had not seen the lawsuit but believed it was not deceiving anyone.
"We think customers understand that it isn't made from avocado," Claire Regan, Kraft Foods' vice president of corporate affairs, told the Los Angeles Times. "All of the ingredients are listed on the label for consumers to reference."
However, the company will relabel the product to make it clearer that the dip is guacamole-flavored, Regan said.
