Vitamin Water has become a popular product in recent years. First, the product was endorsed by rapper 50 Cent, which increased the spotlight and hype around the product. However, there is more to the company than meets the eye. Now, a non-profit public interest group is suing the company for allegedly making unwarranted health claims on their Vitamin Water products. This isn’t a surprise.
Lawyers for Coca-Cola (the company that owns Vitamin Water) are defending the lawsuit by saying that “no consumer could be reasonably misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”
Does this mean that Vitamin Water is not a healthy beverage, even though it contains vitamins and other minerals that are important for health?
The product has been heavily marketed as a healthy beverage, and it is surprising to see Coca-Cola make that assertion in response to the lawsuit.
The product is basically sugar-water with some synthetic vitamins added to it. The amount of sugar is quite a bit, and each bottle contains around 33 grams of sugar. That would make Vitamin Water more of a soft-drink than a health beverage.
So, has the marketing technique for the water created any health problems? Probably not, but there are surely millions of Americans who drink the beverage thinking that they are drinking a healthy drink. So now comes the court process. Will Coca Cola settle out of court, or will they decide to change the way that they market one of their most profitable products?
With two-thirds of the US being classified as “overweight,” lawsuits like this are seen quite often in the food industry.