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'Love' is Not an Ingredient, Says FDA
A Massachusetts bakery was issued a warning after claiming its granola was literally made with love.
Image: FRANK RUMPENHORST/AFP/Getty Images
“Made with love.” It’s something you can say to describe Grandma’s cookies. But when you try to be cute and add it to the ingredient list on the back of your granola packaging, the FDA is inclined to put its foot down, as one Massachusetts bakery discovered last month.
On September 22nd, the FDA wrote a warning letter to the Nashoba Brook Bakery of Concord, MA, outlining a laundry list of “significant violations,” which included a mention of one particular “misbranded” ingredient in the Nashoba Granola: Love.
The agency—which since 1906 has been tasked with the prevention of mislabeling and adulterated foods in the interest of protecting consumers—wrote, “‘Love’ is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.” An agency just doing its job, or passive-aggressive way to kill the joy that local baked goods bring to a community?
In an interview with Bloomberg, Nashoba’s CEO, John Gates, described the complaint as Orwellian, and coming from a “nanny state.”
“Situations like that where the government is telling you you can’t list ‘love’ as an ingredient, because it might be deceptive, just feels so silly.”
The bakery intends to comply with the agency’s requests.
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