The Center for Science in the Public Interest has sued Coca-Cola for selling Vitamin Water. CSPI's claim is that Vitamin Water is not good for you. No duh. In a Platonic sense, CSPI has a point.
Vitamin water is not good for you. It is loaded with crystalline fructose - a euphemism for high fructose corn syrup. One bottle of Vitamin water has enough sugar to rot your teeth and give you a Vitamin-Water belly.
Yet somehow Coca-Cola has convinced people to buy the stuff. People also buy low-fat chips and baked Lay's. People like to
rationalize unhealthy decisions. Vitamin Water may as well have been made with water from a river in Egypt.
However, Coca-Cola has told no lies. CSPI's client claims otherwise:
The lead plaintiff in the case, San Francisco resident James Koh, said in a statement, "I was attracted by the prospect of getting extra vitamins. But I had no idea that I was actually getting almost a Coke's worth of sugar and calories. There's no way I would have spent money on that, had I known."
What? On every bottle of water, in legible font, it shows how many grams of sugar and how many calories are in it. Answer: Almost a Coke's worth. All Jame Koh had to do was read the label. If he didn't read the label, why should he be able to sue? If Coke had lied, Koh's case would be just.
I am a label reader. I buy products based on the company's label
claims. If an item has more carbohydrates or less protein than the label claims, the
company has committed fraud: They lied me to get me to buy their
product. That's a crime.
Where a company has lied about what's in its product, people should go to prison. Where the label tells the truth, what is the wrong? Vitamin Water labels very clearly state that Vitamin Water contains a lot of sugar and a lot of calories. Consume at your own risk.
