Ribena caught out by schoolgirls

Posted by kathryn in Health News, Food Labelling and Kid's nutrition

School science projects can lead to unlikely results – GlaxoSmithKline were caught out on their ribena claims by two New Zealand schoolgirls .

Two years ago Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo, a couple of 14-year-old high school students tested the vitamin C levels in Ribena. Not only did they find it contained very little vitamin C, they also found at least one commercial orange juice brand which had four times more vitamin C than Ribena.

I’m wondering if this is more label trickery . The claim used on the Ribena label and in its advertising is “the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges”. This is different from saying Ribena has four times the vitamin C of oranges .

Blackcurrants are higher in vitamin C than oranges, however Ribena isn’t only made of blackcurrants. As I’ve discussed before , it contains 4% blackcurrants, with the primary ingredients being water and sugar. Of course, this is semantics – the label and all the Ribena advertising implies Ribena is chock-a-block full of vitamin C and therefore a healthy drink.

Technorati tags: ribena , vitamin C , blackcurrants