Our National Disgrace

From time to time you will find some grumpy old blogger going on about some lapse that he or she feels is the latest embarrassment to these United States – almost always something of which the writer disapproves, and which most of the rest of the country either does not care about or (in extreme cases) has never even thought about. Probably the most tragic of these are the ones that involve religion or politics, since the chance of getting even the majority of our population to agree with you are almost zero. I try to avoid this sort of post, partly because there is no way I’m going to convince anybody of anything, and partly because this is a business blog, which means that most of us here don’t really care if something is a national disgrace or not, as long as the company responsible for it is providing a good return on investment for its stockholders. But in a case that popped up this week where someone is suing Nutella for calling itself a “healthy” and “nutritious” food is enough to make anyone slightly embarrassed on behalf of his or her countrymen (and –women)…

The story as recounted for us by Canada’s Globe and Mail online site tells the story of a woman who has filed a claim against the makers of the chocolaty spread, claiming that the advertising that claims that this product is part of a nutritious breakfast when combined with other healthy foods is somehow fraudulent. It’s important to note that under US law, the Nutella packages have to include the amount of sugar, fat, sodium, and so on that the product contains, and the plaintiff in this case is not claiming any violations of that law. It’s also important to note that many other products (including some breakfast cereals and breakfast pastries) also contain large amounts of sugar and fat and also claim to be part of “this nutritious breakfast” in a picture that generally contains toast, orange juice, milk, and occasionally eggs, bacon and fruit as well…

I can’t decide what would be worse: whether the person in our story is sufficiently ignorant to have never even considered the fat or sugar content of literally hundreds of other products marketed as breakfast foods, or if the entire case is simply an attempt to screw money out of a firm with supposedly deep pockets for her own enrichment. On the one hand, it would be depressing to think that we live in a nation full of people who would consider extorting money from an otherwise harmless company simply because they can. On the other hand, it would be sad to think that we live among people who can’t grasp basic ideas like sweet breakfast foods being commonly popular, chocolate spread having sugar in it, or the use of something sweet to make dry toast (or anything else without an inherently interesting flavor) more appealing being common practice. Certainly jams and jellies (which also have large amounts of sugar in them) have been marketed as breakfast foods for centuries, without any noticeable ill effects…

Now, I don’t want to suggest that people shouldn’t have the right to sue for correction of wrongs they feel are being done, or to recover damages that someone has inflicted upon them; such actions fulfill a necessary role in our society and help keep some people honest who otherwise might not be. But in this case it’s hard to see what damage the Nutella people are doing to anybody who is sufficiently literate to read a product label, or what harm using the product could possible have done to the plaintiff or her family. I don’t know if this action began with ignorance or greed, but either way, they’re not making the rest of us look very good right now…