Walmart Class Action Says Great Value Pita Chips Aren’t Really ‘All Natural’

An Illinois woman claims Walmart pita chips are unlawfully mislabeled as “all natural” when in fact they contain synthetic ingredients.

Plaintiff Erin Terrazzino claims defendant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been misbranding its store-brand Great Value All Natural Pita Chips. Terrazzino says these Walmart pita chips can’t truthfully be promoted as “all natural” because they contain certain non-natural ingredients.

An image of the product’s packaging included in this Walmart pita chips class action lawsuit shows the words “all natural” appearing twice on the front of the bag.

But a look at the ingredient list for these pita chips reveals that they contain ingredients that no reasonable consumer would consider natural, according to Terrazzino. She argues that even enriched flour can’t be considered “natural,” since it’s heavily processed and combined with chemical additives.

The plaintiff says the enrichment process extracts naturally-occurring nutrients from the flour, applies a chemical bleach, then adds synthetic substances in an attempt to replace the lost natural nutrients.

The resulting product contains purportedly synthetic substances like niacin, thiamine mononitrate, folic acid, and silicon dioxide, according to this Walmart pita chips class action lawsuit.

By labeling these pita chips as “all natural,” Walmart is exploiting consumer interest in truly natural foods, Terrazzino says. Research by Consumers Union shows that consumers expect a “natural” label to mean the food in question does not contain any artificial ingredients, she says.

She cites one survey that found seven out of 10 consumers are “very” or “somewhat” interested in natural products. Other surveys found that “natural ingredients” were second only to “taste” as determinants of consumer behavior.

Terrazzino accuses Walmart of taking advantage of that interest. Consumers like herself rely on the representations on a product’s packaging when they make purchasing decisions, she says.

She and the putative Class Members reasonably relied on the “all natural” representations on the packaging for Walmart pita chips when they decided to purchase the product. Because of Walmart’s allegedly false and misleading labeling, she claims, she paid more for the product than it was actually worth.

This Walmart pita chips class action lawsuit raises claims for breach of warranty, unjust enrichment, and violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.

Terrazzino seeks to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all persons who purchased Walmart pita chips from a Walmart store in the U.S. at any time between March 3, 2012 and the present. She also proposes a subclass to cover Class Members who purchased their pita chips in Illinois since March 3, 2014.

She is asking the court to compel Walmart to conduct a corrective advertising campaign. She also seeks an award of damages, reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs of the litigation, all with pre- and post-judgment interest.

The plaintiff is represented by Kasif Khowaja of The Khowaja Law Firm LLC and by James X. Bormes and Catherine P. Sons of the Law Office of James X. Bormes PC.

The Walmart Great Value Pita Chips Class Action Lawsuit is Erin Terrazzino v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Case No. 1:17-cv-01731, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

UPDATE: On Aug. 16, 2018, an Illinois federal judge trimmed a class action lawsuit alleging Walmart’s Great Value All Natural Pita Chips contain synthetic, artificial and heavily-processed ingredients and are misbranded as being “all natural.”