From our Everybody-is-full-of-crap series.
European consumers were handed a big win by the courts over German tea company Teekanne when the highest EU court decided the company's "Felix Himbeer-Vanille Abenteuer" (Felix Raspberry Vanilla Adventure) mislead buyers by showing raspberry and vanilla on the package.
The tea did not contain raspberry or vanilla. Nobody asked whether the tea contained Felix, but then cannibalism or eating cats does not happen often these days. An adventure, though, it turns out to be.
The tea contained natural flavors not made from vanilla or raspberry but from wood chips. The company held that the list of ingredients did not claim that raspberries or vanilla were used and that the picture on the container was marked "serving suggestion", hence not making false claims either.
The case made its way through the German court system and was eventually referred to the EU court by Germany's high court.
Teekanne, of course, now joins other companies on our private "feck if I buy from those guys again" list. That's very sad because the K-Landnews has a long history with both tea and raspberries.
We survived England in the days when the only drinkable coffee was to be found at Paddington and Kings X rail stations in tiny shops run by Italian immigrants, hidden behind bookstores. The irony in all of this is that England was the bastion of coffee before the continental cities we think of as coffee pioneers caught on. Then the teatotalers ruled Britannia for centuries until Starbucks came to the rescue.
As a forgiving bunch, we don't judge Teekanne too harshly because we can imagine worse ingredients than wood chip extracts.
Or, as one reader comment in a German paper said: I have a chemistry degree but the ingredients lists on food are a challenge even for me.
[Update 6/5/15] Links to German articles:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/recht-steuern/teekanne-darf-nicht-mit-himbeeren-und-vanille-werben-13628997.html
http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/eu-europaeischer-gerichtshof-urteilt-zu-fruechtetee-von-teekanne_id_4727607.html
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