Food companies put nutrition information on the labels of their products, and we consumers assume that information is, you know, true. Maybe naively so. When tests by our calorie-crunching colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports showed that there was more sugar in Whole Foods’ plain Greek yogurt than the label claimed, the grocery chain pulled the product from shelves.

While containers said that the product had only 2 grams of sugars per cup, it really had 11.4 grams. Here’s the thing: if you pay attention to nutrition information, particularly to the sugar content of the food you eat, you know that it isn’t possible to have only 2 grams of sugars in a container of cow milk yogurt. That’s because milk already contains a form of sugar, lactose. It’s not that Whole Foods was dumping additional sweeteners in the container: most Greek yogurts have 5-10 grams of sugar per serving. A glass of skim milk has 12 grams of lactose.

“Indeed, no Greek yogurt on the market actually has only 2 grams of sugar per serving, because all Greek yogurt – even yogurt to which no sugar is added and/or which is artificially ‘sweetened’ – naturally contains more than 2 grams of sugar lactose,” one of the class action lawsuits points out.

The class actions, which Consumer Reports wasn’t involved in, have been filed so far in California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs asking for refunds for yogurt that Whole Foods customers had already purchased with the erroneous nutrition information. One suit filed in California asks includes people in the class action who have bought this type of yogurt from Whole Foods any time since the year 2000.

Whole Foods pulls yogurt from stores following Consumer Reports’ test [Consumer Reports]
Jackson et al v. Whole Foods Market Inc. [Lawsuit – PDF download]

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