‘Collective Names’ Used for Ingredients in Kind Fruit Bars are Misleading to Consumers, Class Action Argues

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Kind LLC and Kind Inc. are the defendants in a proposed class action lawsuit that claims the labeling of the companies’ Kind bars falsely conveys that they’re manufactured from start to finish from whole fruit ingredients. 

“In other words,” the 18-page lawsuit argues, “the message is that the Products are made by taking whole intact fruits, washing, dicing or chopping, expressing juice, etc., then shaping to form the final product.” 

According to the lawsuit, it is misleading of Kind to list the ingredients in its fruit bar products under a collective name, such as “mango,” “apple,” and “cherry,” because consumers are unable to hash out for themselves the “value, quality and nature of the actual ingredients” prior to purchase. The complaint reasons that the use of generic, collective names give reasonable consumers the impression that Kind bars’: 

“Federal regulations, mirrored by those of this and other states, require that the name ascribed to an ingredient be a specific name as opposed to a collective name (subject to certain non-applicable exceptions),” the suit states.