Lindt chocolates have long marketed themselves as a high-class, upper-crust sort of confection. Unfortunately, they've just shot their own marketing in the foot.
Lindt, a gourmet chocolate brand, said its delectable goodies are not “expertly crafted with the finest ingredients,” as the packaging suggests.
The Swiss company confessed in an attempt to get a lawsuit against it dismissed, but it backfired when the Eastern District of New York court denied the effort.
Lindt found itself in a sticky situation in 2023 after a US consumer organization reported alleged high levels of lead in its dark chocolate bars.
. . .
Although Lindt isn’t the only brand with lead inside its goods, consumers were frustrated that they were paying significantly more for the chocolate, which promised “quality and safe dark chocolate.”
To combat the accusations, Lindt’s lawyers clarified that some of the product’s components were exaggerated, such as the “excellence” in quality and experts’ involvement in fusing the ingredients.
Disappointed by the company’s actions, the Eastern District court deemed the product to have “exaggerated advertising, blustering and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely.”
There's more at the link.
In a highly competitive market such as gourmet chocolates, that's a pretty damning admission. I won't be surprised if competitors use it in their own advertising, comparing their products favorably to their Lindt competition. They can't be accused of negative campaigning, after all, since Lindt has publicly admitted to their own faults and errors.
I'm all for truth in advertising. Next thing you know, Godiva Chocolatier will be forced to admit that their confectionery wasn't actually paraded naked on horseback through the streets of Coventry!
Peter
6 comments:
Yes, but we use the highest quality lead.
Does Cadbury have Cadmium?
My nephew works for Lindt.
Lindt, lint. You tell me.
A lot of chocolate is grown in high cadmium soil and the cacao beans pick it up. Some of the lead comes from the soil but most comes from contaminated dust and dirt on the beans.
Cacao has cadmium and lead in it. That's why every single brand had SOME of both of those in it. The most expensive chocolate you're likely to get is made in small individual batches by independent chocolatiers, and it'll taste freaking amazing... but I guaranfreakingtee that if you tested it for lead and cadmium, the levels would be even higher than in Lindt, or any other major consumer brand you care to name. Why? Because it takes expensive freaking equipment to mutilate cacao enough to strip out all the lead and cadmium, and an independent chocolatier is not going to have that equipment. I get wanting lower levels in your chocolate, sure. That's fine. But expensive, good chocolate≠lower cadmium and lead levels.
And biasedcommie reports (to whom I was a subscriber for well over two decades) has failed its original purpose, and can eat my shorts. I don't care about Lindt, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out the actual driving source behind these lawsuits was actually Lindt being insufficiently obsequious to the woke clown worlders. Lindt had 2 options here. (1) prove that expert crafting ≠lower lead and cadmium, or (2) say that "expert crafting" doesn't refer to the kind of expertise (namely magically lower lead and cadmium levels) that the plaintiffs insisted it did. Their lawyers intelligently chose (2). Because (1) is basically a recipe for decades in court and tens of millions of dollars in legal fees that will never be recouped.
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