Annie’s Fruit Snacks Don’t Contain the Advertised Fruit, Class Action Says

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

A California man says the lack of strawberries in Annie’s Summer Strawberry Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks makes them falsely and deceptively labeled.

Plaintiff Raymond Alvandi says defendant Annie’s Inc. misrepresents not only the fruit content of these bunny-shaped gummy snacks but also their nutritional value, the Annie’s class action lawsuit says.

Despite representations on the label like “Summer Strawberry” and “Natural Strawberry Flavors,” the product actually has no strawberry content of any kind, he claims. It’s therefore mislabeled in a way designed to trick consumers into paying more for a product that isn’t what they’ve been reasonably led to believe it is, the plaintiff says.

Alvandi includes a photo of the ingredient list from Annie’s Summer Strawberry Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks. The list includes about a dozen discrete ingredients, most of which are indicated as being organic. But there is no mention on the list of strawberries or even any strawberry-derived byproducts.

Contrary to the ingredient list, the front of the brick-red box shows the words “Summer Strawberry” and “Natural Strawberry Flavors” prominently displayed.

According to Alvandi, this labeling “fails to reveal the basic nature and characterizing properties of the Strawberry Fruit Snacks.” The product is therefore “mislabeled” under the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, he claims, meaning that it cannot lawfully be marketed in the U.S. as it is currently labeled.

He also argues the labeling violates California’s Sherman Food Drug and Cosmetic Law, which expressly incorporates the food labeling standards in the federal FDCA.

Labeling fruit snacks this way is apparently not uncommon, according to this Annie’s class action lawsuit. Alvandi quotes a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, noting that food companies often promote fruit-based snacks as a substitute for real fruit.

“Unfortunately for parents and kids, phony fruit snacks don’t always contain the fruits advertised on the front of the box and never in the quantities suggested,” the report says.

Companies allegedly substitute juices from fruits other than those advertised – juices that are “relatively cheap, nutritionally void, and highly processed … making phony fruit snacks much closer to gummy bears than actual fruit,” the report says.

By using cheaper fruit content while advertising more costly ingredients, the labeling at issue here has allowed Annie’s to charge a premium price that it would not have been able to charge otherwise, Alvandi claims.

He says he has purchased Annie’s Summer Strawberry fruit snacks on several occasions, each time in reliance on the labeling that led him to believe they contained significant strawberry content. Had he known they contained no strawberry ingredients at all, he claims, he never would have purchased them.

Alvandi proposes to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all persons within the U.S. who bought Annie’s Summer Strawberry Organic Fruit Snacks within six years before the filing of this Annie’s class action lawsuit.

He seeks a court injunction barring Annie’s from continuing to promote its fruit snacks in the allegedly deceptive manner complained of here. He also seeks an award of statutory, compensatory, treble and punitive damages, restitution, and reimbursement of his attorneys’ fees and costs of litigation.

Alvandi is represented by Trinette G. Kent of Lemberg Law LLC.

The Annie’s Summer Strawberry Organic Fruit Snacks Class Action Lawsuit is Raymond Alvandi v. Annie’s Inc., Case No. 2:17-cv-05691, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.