Ribena caught out by schoolgirls
Posted by kathryn in Myths and Labels & advertising
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.
27 March, 2007
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