Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #596

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Woman Sues Cold Stone Creamery Over Lack of Pistachios In Pistachio Ice Cream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=109TfO2Y6w8
By The Associated Press
Is it nuts to assume a scoop of pistachio ice cream should contain actual pistachios? Or how about real butter in a dish of butter
pecan?
Such weighty ques- tions about a favorite summertime confec- tion could soon be decided by the courts.
A federal judge in New York has given the go-ahead to a Long Island woman’s class action lawsuit that claims con- sumers are being duped by Cold Stone Creamery when they purchase certain fla- vors that “do not con- tain their represented ingredients.”
Lead plaintiff Jenna Marie Duncan pur- chased her serving of pistachio ice cream from a Cold Stone Creamery store in Levittown, New York, in or around July 2022. According her lawsuit, Duncan “rea- sonably believed that the Pistachio ice cream she purchased from defendant con- tained pistachio.”
But Duncan later learned after reading the company’s web-
site there were no pistachios — a mem- ber of the cashew family — in the frozen dairy product, but rather “pistachio flavoring” that’s defined as a mixture of water, Ethanol, Propylene Glycol, natural and artificial flavor, Yellow 5, and Blue 1, according to the lawsuit.
“When consumers purchase pistachio ice cream, they expect pistachios, not a concoction of processed ingredi- ents,” Duncan’s law- suit reads, noting that competitors such as Haagen-Dazs use real pistachios in their ice cream.
Duncan also takes issue with the ingre- dients in Cold Stone’s mango, coconut, orange, mint, butter pecan ice creams
and its orange sor- bet.
A message was left by The Associated Press seeking com- ment from Duncan’s attorney.
U.S. District Court Judge Gary R. Brown, whose some- times tongue-in- cheek court ruling is sprinkled with song lyrics about ice cream — from Louis Prima’s “Banana Split for My Baby” to Weird Al Yankovic’s “I Love Rocky Road” — writes how the case “raises a deceptively complex question about the reasonable expectations of plain- tiff and like-minded ice cream aficiona- dos.”
Should a consumer ordering pistachio ice cream expect actual pistachios?
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