Ribena ri-busted

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Mar 28th 2007 @ 9:31AM

Two 14-year-old New Zealand girls made the news recently when their school science project revealed that Ribena, the popular black currant drink, did not have the high levels of vitamin C it claimed to. According to a story published yesterday in The Guardian, the girls were testing a variety of beverages, expecting to find that the less expensive ones had less vitamin C, when they discovered the opposite. Their results were picked up by a local news show and then eventually a national watchdog group. Today, The Guardian reported that GlaxoSmithKline, the drink's producer, is being fined almost $160,000 for misleading ads, which stated "the black currants in Ribena contain four times the vitamin C of oranges." A GSK press release says that that fact is true "on a weight for weight basis," but also admits that it could be misleading. There's also some discrepancy about the differing vitamin C levels in the concentrate versus the diluted product. On a personal note, I was a Ribena drinker for a while. I think it's tasty stuff. I don't think I ever believed it was good for me, however.

Filed Under: Business, Newspapers, Drink Recipes
Tags: black currant, BlackCurrant, drink, europe, fined, girls, glaxosmithkline, juice, new zealand, ribena, science project, vitamin c

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-28-2007 @11:15AM Meek Speaks said... Couple of thoughts here. First, being somewhat cynical of marketing rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims, I'm not surprised...that said, Ribena has been around an awful long time and for them to be misleading consumers this long would surprise me so, allow me to be a teeny bit suspicious of a junior high school science project's accuracy. Until I see the results of the watchdog tests and know the nutritional value of this product done by professional scientists, I'll simply abstain from voting at this time.

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