US Court: Packaging for Garden Veggie Straws is not misleading
It was stated that even though the product's five main ingredients are potato starch, potato flour, corn starch, tomato paste, and spinach power, only trace amounts of the tomato paste and spinach powder were used and these "vegetable by-products ... completely lack the nutritional value of their whole vegetable counterparts."
The US District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed the case. It said that it wasn't misleading to call the product 'veggie' straws, since Hain does use vegetable-based ingredients in the product. Since vegetables grow in a garden, the court said it wasn't misleading to characterize the product as 'from a garden'.
Mondaq.com reports that regarding the images of whole tomatoes, spinach, and potatoes, the court also found that these pictures would not mislead reasonable consumers. The court felt that the picture of the straws clearly communicated to consumers the type of snack they were buying -- "a processed unnaturally-coloured 'straw' snack resembling a chip or crisp that, though derived from vegetable-based products, looks nothing even remotely like a fresh or ripe vegetable."
