‘Healthy Real Hydration’ Claims Render Gatorade Fit Misbranded, Class Action Claims

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A proposed class action alleges Gatorade Fit is misbranded since the drinks’ labels include “nutrient content claims” that fail to satisfy certain legal requirements.

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The 15-page lawsuit alleges defendant PepsiCo has marketed Gatorade Fit with nutrient-focused label statements that don’t meet the requirements for such claims under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which empowers the Food and Drug Administration to protect public health by ensuring foods are safe and properly labeled.

Although PepsiCo touts Gatorade Fit as offering “Healthy Real Hydration,” containing “No Added Sugar,” and as an “Excellent Source of Antioxidant Vitamin A & C”—which are all nutrient content claims given that they “state or imply the level of a nutrient using defined terms,” the suit says— the beverage falls short of the benchmark that would allow it to be lawfully tagged as “healthy,” the case claims. The suit focuses in particular on the “Healthy Real Hydration” claim, as lawful use of the term “healthy” is subject to very specific legal requirements.

In particular, Gatorade Fit, which is essentially water flavored with a small amount of juice concentrate and citric acid and sweetened with stevia leaf extract, does not contain at least 10 percent of the recommended daily intake or daily reference value per reference amount of one or more of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or fiber.  

Per the case, although the drink is fortified with electrolytes that add vitamins C, B3, A, B5 and B6 such that 500 milliliters of the beverage contains 100 percent of the FDA’s daily recommended value of each vitamin, federal regulations dictate that if a manufacturer adds a nutrient to a food to meet the 10-percent requirement, that addition must be in accordance with the FDA’s fortification policy, the complaint says. 

Under FDA regulations, fortification of a food is permitted in only four circumstances: to correct a “dietary insufficiency recognized by the scientific community”; to “restore such nutrient(s) to a level(s) representative of the food prior to storage, handling and processing”; to “avoid nutritional inferiority” when replacing a “traditional food”; and “in proportion” to the food’s total caloric content so as to balance its vitamin, mineral and protein content, the suit relays. 

The Gatorade Fit drinks do not qualify for fortification with vitamins A or C under any of these circumstances, and none of the products at issue meet the FDA’s 10-percent requirement without fortification, and are thus misbranded, the case contests.  

The suit contends that consumers paid more for Gatorade Fit beverages due to PepsiCo’s “misbranded claims,” and would not have purchased the product, or would have at least paid less for it, had they known the products were misbranded. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all consumers in California who, at any time within the last four years, bought any Gatorade Fit products for personal or household use and not for resale.

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