ColumnChobani, the best-selling Greek yogurt in the U.S., has tapped into a market for healthy food, but is it all it claims? We go behind the label to find out.

Founded in 2005 by Turkish immigrant Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani finally launched in 2007 to critical acclaim. The company now commands the top spot in the booming $2 billion a year Greek yogurt category–boasting more than 70 products, and a team of more than two thousand employees around the world.

The Good

Greek yogurt is higher in protein than regular yogurt—about twice as much—and Chobani positions this protein source as an excellent workout food. The company also claims its ingredients are “all natural,” and while not organic, Chobani also says none of the dairy used comes from cows fed rBST—the controversial growth hormone common in conventional dairy. But while they claim not to use rBST, the Chobani website also states “According to the FDA, no significant difference has been shown, and no test can now distinguish, between milk from rBST treated cows and untreated cows.”

Chobani products avoid the use of artificial sweeteners. “The sugars found in our products come from milk (lactose), real fruit (fructose), honey and evaporated cane juice (which is less processed than white table sugar and is used to sweeten the fruit, vanilla and chocolate chunk preps used in our authentic strained Greek yogurt products).”

The Shepherd’s Gift Foundation is Chobani’s charitable arm, giving ten percent of all profits to nearly twenty organizations including the Making Waves to Fight Cancer organization, Earthquake relief efforts in Erds, Turkey, Luke’s Wings and Chenango Memorial Hospital.

The Bad

GMO Inside, the nonprofit organization working to bring attention to genetically modified ingredients in food, recently targeted Chobani for the use of the word “natural,” which is featured prominently on all of its product packaging, website and marketing materials. It’s even earned the conventional yogurt brand a spot in most Whole Foods markets, the retail chain that recently announced it would label all GMOs in its stores by 2018.

While the company does not use milk from dairy cows fed artificial growth hormones, it also does not source organic milk, GMO Inside points out. Conventional dairy cows are most often fed genetically modified alfalfa, corn and soy.  The World Health Organization defines GMOs as not occurring naturally. Several leading food producers have faced class action lawsuits over use of the term “natural” on foods that contained GMOs. As a result of the GMO Inside campaign, thousands of customers have petitioned Chobani to switch to organic dairy. But instead of changing its ingredients to those that are truly natural, it appears the company is simply shifting its marketing strategy, opting to focus on the word “real” instead of “natural”, which the company has used for some time.

Even though the company adheres to a ‘no artificial sweetener’ policy, its use of cane sugar landed Chobani with a class action lawsuit in 2012 alleging that the amount of added cane sugar (roughly one-third of the product’s sugar content) violated both federal and California law over ‘no added sugar’ claims. In July 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Chobani would not have to pull its products from store shelves over the mislabeling, but did acknowledge the plaintiff’s claim that the products are mislabeled.

The other major issue that’s giving Chobani a bad name is the manufacturing process. One ounce of the Greek yogurt requires three to four ounces of fresh milk, which produces a very acidic whey by-product once processed. According to an expose in Modern Farmer, “it’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers. That could turn a waterway into what one expert calls a “dead sea,” destroying aquatic life over potentially large areas. Spills of cheese whey, a cousin of Greek yogurt whey, have killed tens of thousands of fish around the country in recent years.”

The Questionable

The large quantities in acid whey are such a huge problem for Chobani that they’re paying farmers to take it off their hands, but there may be another option. Dave Barbano, a dairy scientist at Cornell thinks the protein in acid whey may find a use in infant formula.

While that might very well do away with some of the whey waste, it is essentially offering newborns a concentrated genetically modified food, and GMOs have been linked to a number of serious health issues. Newborns and infants have particularly sensitive digestive systems, which may not be the healthiest use for genetically modified whey.

Recently, the USDA invited Chobani to supply pilot schools with its Greek yogurt as part of efforts to provide school children healthier meals. If successful, the plan is to roll out the Greek yogurt offering to all of the U.S. school systems.

A higher protein food, Greek yogurt may be a step up from the Pink Slime U.S. schools were serving recently. But a six-ounce serving of fruit flavored Chobani can contain as much as 20 grams of sugar (five teaspoons). The recommendation for children is no more than three teaspoons of sugar per day. Granted, some of the sugars in Chobani yogurts are naturally occurring from fruit and the dairy, but cane sugar is the third ingredient listed on its popular blueberry flavor.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: Mr. T in DC

Related stories

Behind the Label: Ben & Jerry’s 

Chipotle Labels GMOs…So Should You Still Eat There?

The post Chobani Greek Yogurt: Naturally Healthy or Not? Behind the Label appeared first on EcoSalon.

After a photo of a grocery store note went viral, the discussion about food marketed as “natural” got a lot more heated.

Natural cereal brand Kashi made headlines in recent weeks after information about the company’s corporate ownership and use of genetically modified and pesticide-containing ingredients went viral in the social media space. The firestorm was ignited by a photograph, taken of a note posted in a Rhode Island natural foods store explaining why the store had pulled Kashi products from its shelves. Since the image has made the rounds on the internet, customers and food bloggers have been up in arms, posting nasty messages on Kashi’s Facebook page and writing impassioned editorials expressing their disappointment and betrayal.

It’s all very dramatic, but it’s raised some important discussions on the marketing of natural products and the politics of genetically modified foods. One also has to wonder how much of the information circulating on the internet about the subject is valid, how much is exaggerated, and how much is downright false. In this week’s Behind the Label, we take a look at the facts behind the recent Kashi controversy.

The Good

Kashi was founded in 1984 by Phil and Gayle Tauber, a health-conscious couple living in La Jolla, California, who were passionate about whole-grain nutrition. The company’s first cereal, Kashi Breakfast Pilaf, contained a blend of seven whole grains and sesame, and its subsequent offerings included the same basic ingredients throughout a variety of natural breakfast foods. With its small line-up of products, Kashi grew slowly and steadily through the 1980s and 1990s, until the Kellogg Company purchased Kashi in 2000. The acquisition propelled Kashi’s distribution forward, turning it into a household name.

Today, Kashi continues to be “independently operated” in La Jolla (though we’re still not quite sure what that means when you’re owned by a corporation). The product line has grown to include snack bars, crackers, cookies, waffles, and frozen entrees, all stamped with words like “all natural” and “nutritious.” While Kashi does not specifically claim to use organic ingredients in all of its products, the company has taken steps toward greater supply chain sustainability, like releasing a handful of USDA certified organic products and working with the Non-GMO Project to verify the organic ingredients of seven of its cereals.

And just on Monday, in response to the consumer outrage of the past few weeks, Kashi general manager David DeSouza announced the Kashi Commitment, which stated that all new Kashi foods will be Non-GMO Project Verified and contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients, starting in 2015. The announcement also promised that all existing GoLean® Cereals and Chewy Granola Bars — the company’s most popular products — will be Non-GMO Project Certified by the end of 2014.

The Bad

The man behind the now-infamous note is John Wood, who owns The Green Grocer in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Wood told USA Today that he decided to remove Kashi products from his shelves after reading a report on natural cereals from the Cornucopia Institute, an advocacy group for family-scale farming.

The report, called “Cereal Crimes: How ‘Natural’ Claims Deceive Consumers and Undermine the Organic Label,” explores the difference between organic products and “so-called natural” ones, which the organization says tend to contain ingredients that are genetically modified and/or contain harmful pesticides. The report called out Kashi for its use of hexane-extracted soy protein, which is immersed in a bath of more than 50 percent n-hexane, a known neurotoxin. The report also included the findings of a GMO Mon 40-3-2 test on the soy ingredients contained in Kashi’s GoLean® cereal, which were shown to be 100 percent genetically modified.

Responding to the reaction generated from the note and report, general manager DeSouza told USA Today that Kashi had done nothing wrong, since the FDA does not regulate the term “natural.” The company also released a video from a Kashi team member and nutritionist, which aimed to dispel the “inaccurate information being circulated online about Kashi ingredients.” The response passed the buck for Kashi’s GMO usage to the fact that more than 80 percent of crops being grown in the United States are grown using GMOs and suggested that blame can be assigned to “factors outside our control,” like pollen drift and practices in agricultural storage, handling, and shipping.

The Cornucopia Institute immediately snapped back with a news item criticizing the video response, particular where the nutritionist calls Cornucopia’s information “scientifically inaccurate and misleading because it was not based on actual testing of Kashi products.”

“This characterization of our work by Kashi is blatantly false,” said Will Fantle, Cornucopia’s Research Director. “We purchased a readily available box of Kashi’s GoLean® cereal from a Whole Foods store. We then sent a sample to an accredited national lab for testing, finding that the soy in the natural cereal was 100% GMO.”

How dangerous are these findings, exactly? According to Cornucopia, studies have found health hazards and toxic effects associated with genetically modified soy, which “suggest” that there might be an effect on human health. However, they admit that the possibility has not been properly investigated. As for whether hexane-extracted soy protein is safe for consumption, the Soyfoods Association of North America says that it is because virtually all of the hexane is removed from the soybeans before they are processed. The FDA also recognizes hexane solvent extraction as a safe processing method, so long as residue levels don’t exceed a specified amount.

That information may not sway organic food purists, but it might comfort regular consumers who have been spooked by media reports into thinking that Kashi products have extremely high levels of poisonous toxins.

The Questionable

One of the most significant byproducts of the recent Kashi controversy is the resulting discussion, with consumers questioning what companies mean when they use words like “natural.” As DeSouza pointed out, the FDA doesn’t regulate this sort of language, so each company is left to define for themselves – and their customers – what their standards are. Kashi, for instance, defines natural as “food that’s minimally processed, made with no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or sweeteners.” Only their certified organic and Non-GMO Project Verified products claim to use organic ingredients that haven’t been genetically modified.

Another big shocker for many Kashi customers was the revelation that the company, which on its website represents itself as a small business – “after 25 years, still fewer than 70 of us” – is actually owned by Kellogg, the mega-corporation behind fellow cereal aisle brands like Froot Loops, Corn Pops, and Frosted Mini-Wheats. Nowhere on Kashi’s packaging is the Kellogg’s logo found, nor is Kashi listed on the Kellogg Company’s online list of brands. It’s obvious that both parties want to maintain the psychological distance that exists between Kashi and its high-fructose-corn-syrup-heavy sister brands on the supermarket shelf.

So what could have prevented the consumer outrage and Kashi’s extensive crisis management response? On the industry’s part, further definition of and regulations around the marketing of natural products. On Kashi’s and Kellogg’s part, greater transparency about their business relationship and practices. And on the customers’ part, due diligence and a more critical approach toward the products they choose to consume.

Image: New Hope 360, Mayce Hodges

The post Behind The Label: The Kashi Controversy appeared first on EcoSalon.

How do Pret A Manger’s sustainable values extend to all of its locations?

Pret A Manger was founded in London by two college friends who wanted to make a “proper” sandwich with natural ingredients, “the sort of food they craved but couldn’t find anywhere else.”

As the story goes, “Pret grew and grew. And grew.” Since the first sandwich shop opened in 1986, Pret has expanded to 265 shops in the United Kingdom, United States, Hong Kong, and now France. With an emphasis on “good natural food,” Pret emphasizes local sourcing, organic ingredients, and corporate transparency. But how well have these commitments transferred to Pret’s overseas locations, and how will they continue to scale? This week’s Behind the Label column takes a look.

On its U.K. corporate website, Pret a Manger addresses its sustainability challenges with honesty, openness, and a touch of cheek.

We don’t believe in long-winded ‘eco’ policies that simply don’t ring true. This is our Sustainability Strategy; it explains what we actually do at Pret rather than just what we’d like to.

Goals are broken into several categories: resources, waste, sustainable sourcing, healthy food, contribution to society, and the intangible “do more.”

The Good

Among its sustainability goals, Pret aims to send zero waste to the landfill by 2012 by implementing a number of simple steps. For one, Pret donates all of its unused food to homeless shelters at the end of each day, amounting to more than 12,000 meals per week in the U.K. Pret has also rolled out both front of house and back of house recycling in its U.K. locations, as well as new composting measures. Packaging is either made from sustainable sources, or from recycled material and is fully recyclable. Employees are trained to only provide one napkin per item purchased, and to ask customers if they really want a plastic bag.

Pret also feels strongly about the quality of its ingredients, and it is surprisingly open about the challenges involved in sustainable sourcing:

Buying ingredients locally makes perfect sense for a multitude of reasons… Buying decisions don’t just come down to distance, however, and other things come into play – weather and local farming methods being just two. Is it better to grow tomatoes in the sunshine of Southern Spain and then put them on a boat, or to grow them in a poly tunnel under UV light in England?

This open, conversational tone pervades Pret’s messaging. Throughout the site, customers are invited to contact top-level Pret managers with questions and suggestions. And believe it or not, they actually write back! When I emailed Pret’s Technical Manager asking about U.S. ingredient sourcing, I received a prompt response connecting me with Pret’s U.S. Director of Food and head of customer service. I haven’t yet received a concrete answer to my question, but I’m impressed that with a simple email I was provided instant access to people in positions of power within the company.

The Bad

A few months ago, our Behind the Label on Chipotle showed that fresh food and natural ingredients don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with health. The same rings true for Pret A Manger.

Last April, a Daily Mail article revealed the “alarming truth” about Pret’s offerings; namely, that their items contain shockingly high calorie, saturated fat, and sugar counts. A small cup of tomato soup, for instance, contains 4.5 grams of salt – “the same as the amount in nine packets of crisps” and close to the UK’s daily recommended allowance of 6 grams per day. The Posh Cheddar and Pickle Baguette contains 800 calories and 15.6 grams of saturated fat, while the Ham, Cheese, and Mustard Toastie clocks in at 696 calories and 18 grams of saturated fat. “Eek!” the Daily Mail proclaimed. Eek is right.

Also questionable is Pret A Manger’s relationship with McDonald’s, which owned a 33 percent majority share in the company from 2001 to 2008. Pret describes the relationship simply and directly, but somewhat vaguely:

Their international influence and expertise helped in our expansion beyond the UK (something clamoured for by the thousands of tourists who visit our shops each week). McDonald’s did not have any direct influence over what we sold or how we sold it. In 2008, Pret A Manger was sold to Bridgepoint which brought an end to the relationship with McDonald’s.

The partnership is obviously a sore subject, so much so that Pret has retained a PR firm specifically to distance itself from the mega-chain.

The Questionable

Pret A Manger’s success has changed the way many Brits perceive fast food, and its overseas expansion proves that the movement doesn’t have to be limited to the U.K. But how readily do Pret’s values translate across marketplaces? One apparent disconnect is in the different messaging and information available on Pret A Manger’s country-specific websites.

On the U.K. site, for instance, the Pret Sustainability section provides a wide array of information with specific details and action points. In its Ingredients section, we can see that Pret’s meatballs include pork from Farm Assured-equivalent European farms, “mixed and cooked for us in Cambridgeshire.” Milk is “100 percent organic, from dairy farms in and around Somerset, delivered chilled every day,” while pesto is “prepared and blended in New Covent Garden Market to our own traditional recipe.”

That makes sense for the U.K., but what about policies in the U.S., Hong Kong, and now France, where Pret just opened a Paris location?

The U.S. Pret Sustainability section is pretty spare, with the same goals outlined but nothing close to the level of detail and concreteness available on the U.K. site. Curiously, Pret sites for Hong Kong and France don’t even have sustainability sections.

The disconnect was further illustrated during a recent visit to a Pret A Manger in midtown Manhattan by a few of my EcoSalon colleagues. When the women couldn’t locate recycling receptacles in the dining area, they asked the employee behind the counter where they could recycle their bottles and cans. The employee accepted the bottles and cans, but then threw them into the regular trash can.

“With all that they have touting organic all over the restaurant, one would think it was a real sustainable place but I ended up feeling like I was being ripped off with the lack of recycling,” my colleague told me.

Pret A Manger has done a great job at reframing fast food and promoting sustainable practices in the U.K. But if Pret intends to maintain the same mission and goals as it expands, it should ensure that the same policies and messaging are in place across the board and around the world.

SEE ALSO:

Behind the Label: H&M’s Conscious Collection

Behind the Label: McDonald’s See What We’re Made Of Campaign

Behind the Label: Levi Strauss’ E-Valuate Program

Behind the Label: Chipotle, Food With Integrity

Behind the Label: West Elm Green

Behind the Label: TOMS’ One for One Campaign

Behind the Label: Design Within Reach

Behind the Label: Burt’s Bees

Behind the Label: Aveda Natural Beauty Products

Behind the Label: Puma’s Vision and Clever Little Bag

Image: skinnylawyer

The post Behind the Label: Pret A Manger appeared first on EcoSalon.

“Real Food” products are gradually taking up shelf space as more people are looking for alternatives to synthesized food products with lists of unrecognizable and unpronounceable ingredients. Hallelujah!

Amongst these new products are all natural granola bars made by 18 Rabbits. I’d never seen hide nor tail of these bars until a friend handed me one after a great day of spring skiing in Tahoe. Maybe it was the pure mountain air or the exhilarating day of snowboarding, but I found this granola bar to be extremely good. This delectable chewy treat delightfully named “Haute Diggity Date” has lots of flavor while delivering amazingly wholesome satisfaction.

18 Rabbits originates in San Francisco, and the bars are made from all natural, organic ingredients.  The company’s thorough, stylish and easily navigable website tells their story and they provide not only the ingredients for all their products, but also the farms from whence the various nuts and berries came. Regular granola and granola bars of different flavors are available at selected groceries including Whole Foods and from their online shop.

The post Haute Diggity Date: Natural Granola Bar Review appeared first on EcoSalon.