• 🧑‍⚖️ GoodPop Sues JonnyPop for False Ads
• 🆕 Conagra's 50 New Grocery Products
• 🤝 Nutrisco Acquires LiveMore Superfoods
• 🍨 Ice Cream Recall Affects Multiple Brands
• ✨ Cannabis, Kava & The Fancy Food Show

The Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum this week brought together a wide range of food and beverage industry stakeholders to discuss the most pressing issues all the way from farm to fork. Speakers ranged from government officials to private sector executives and investors who provided a bird’s eye view into trends and the industry’s response. From our notes, here are some highlights:

Regulating Healthfulness: FDA Human Foods deputy commissioner Jim Jones shared that within days, the agency will finalize its definition for the term healthy and is working to develop a logo that will also indicate this claim on food products that meet the set criteria.

• It is also actively working on voluntary, front-of-pack labels that highlight saturated fat, sodium and added sugar contents; various approaches are being tested to ensure they can be easily understood.
• FDA will also stand up a “systematic post-market review program for food additives” with Jones criticizing California’s recent additive bans, saying the FDA wants to make these determinations so that they can be implemented and enforced at a federal level.
• As for Ozempic, the food and pharma branches of the FDA are in talks about an open collaboration on how these medications will impact the American diet long term: “It’s an open-ended question,” Jones stated. 

Building Healthy Businesses: From president of Cinnabon to her current post as president and COO of Athletic Greens, Kat Cole’s career has spanned the full spectrum of food and health concepts in America. She shared her thoughts on managing a business built atop a single SKU.

• Running a restaurant business versus a CPG company requires a totally different decision making process, she said. With a well-diversified portfolio of menus, there are “plenty of levers to pull” versus at AG1’s single lever that has been steadily polished over the company’s 14-year history.
• “Everything we do affects the one thing we do. And so we have to hold ourselves to such an insanely high standard.”

Investing in the Future of Health: Food trends change fast and continually lead the industry into uncharted terrain. For example, Manna Tree co-founder and managing partner Gabrielle Rubenstein said she never would have thought cottage cheese would be “a sexy food,” but here we are: 

• “I thought of cottage cheese… as something my grandmother may have eaten... It’s where Greek yogurt was a decade ago,” she said. 
• But in today’s world, where clean label, high-protein, transparent and traceable products are in vogue, the product has become a hot food for the “97% of households today that still eat dairy.”
• Regardless of whether a product is animal- or plant-based, clean ingredient and transparent supply chain claims are winning above all else and that’s where investors are looking to put their pocketbooks.

Check out the full recap on Nosh for more insights from the event, including a discussion with Bob’s Red Mill CEO Trey Winthrop.

Better-for-you frozen treat maker GoodPop yesterday filed a lawsuit in Austin against frozen fruit-and-cream bar brand JonnyPop for false advertising around added sugar. 

🤔 The suit alleges that, despite featuring images of fruit on its packaging, JonnyPop’s Rainbow Fruit Stacks only contain “a few drops” of fruit and vegetable concentrate while the primary ingredients are water and cane sugar. 

👀 The plaintiff claims that based on a survey, four out of five consumers incorrectly believe JonnyPop’s products contain at least 50% fruit. Comparatively, GoodPop’s line of Junior Pops contains zero added sugar and is crafted with 100% fruit juice and/or purees. 

🧒 In the suit, GoodPop demands that JonnyPop transparently depict that its products primarily consist of cane sugar to combat added sugar overconsumption among children.  

🗣️ The suit comes at a time when broader conversations are happening about misleading labeling of better-for-you products, including a recent class action lawsuit filed against prebiotic soda brand Poppi for its purported gut health benefit claims. 

Conagra Brands announced the rollout of 50 new products set to hit grocery shelves this summer spanning dinner, dessert and diet-specific offerings. Here’s a taste of what’s to come:

🤠 The Dolly Parton Diet: Expanding on her collaboration with Duncan Hines, Dolly will release a lineup of Southern-style products including frozen Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese and two frozen desserts: Decadent Chocolate Pie and Original Whipped Cheesecake.

🧊 Going even deeper, Conagra is expanding its Chef Boyardee brand into the freezer for the first time with Spaghetti & Meatballs, Chicken Alfredo, and Cheese Ravioli meals, which can be made in under 15 minutes.

🌱 The company is also innovating with new plant-based and gluten-free offerings, adding three new products to its Gardein banner and six new sandwich cookies and pretzels products to its Glutino line. 

Hungry for more? Check out our new products gallery on Nosh later today.

Latin American economic group Nutrisco acquired a majority ownership of LiveMore Superfoods this week, an American farm-to-package smoothie company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 

⏪ Fifteen-year-old LiveMore produces ready-to-blend smoothie cups with ingredients like organic fruits, vegetables, dates, seeds and cacao. Its products are available in the U.S. and Mexico at retailers like Target, CVS and Costco. 

🌎 Chilean-based Nutrisco is part of one of the leading economic groups in Latin America, with annual total sales of $30 billion. The merger is said to provide LiveMore with greater resources to boost its global presence. 

👀 In other M&A news, The Zidian Group – which operates Summer Garden Food Manufacturing – has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Lassonde Industries, a manufacturer of private label and branded food and beverage products. Zidian Group’s owned brands include G Hughes Sugar Free, Little Italy in the Bronx and Gia Russa. 

At least 70 ice cream and sorbet products, including cakes, sandwiches, pints and novelties, were recalled this week due to a possible Listeria contamination. 

🍦 Brands involved in the recall were all ​​manufactured by Totally Cool, Inc. of Owings Mills, Md. and include Jeni’s, Marco, The Frozen Farmer, Dolcezza Gelato, Friendly’s, Hershey’s Ice Cream and Chipwich, among others.

🦠 Totally Cool ceased production and distribution after FDA sampling detected the presence of Listeria monocytogenes. No illnesses have been reported to date. 

The CPG Week team covered a lot of ground on this week’s episode with a discussion that hits recent news in cannabis and hemp, a recap of the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show and deep dive into why kava beverages have yet to find their key to functional beverage consumers.

😬 Cannabis powerhouse Curaleaf is launching into hemp with a new DTC website that will likely shake up the THC products business.

🆕 The Summer Fancy Food Show is often a place to show off innovation and trends, and this year was no exception. The team discusses many of the products on display from freeze-dried cheesecake to savory drink biscuits.

🌴 Kava has been slowly building a following in on-premise settings for decades but has had trouble breaking through in retail-ready formats. The CPG Week-ers chat about its future in functional beverages and why another “relaxation” ingredient might be the key to its success.

Listen to the full episode on Nosh and subscribe to get a fresh episode each week. 

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