FDA has scolded Nashoba Brook Bakery for including "love" in its ingredient list for granola, stating that the human emotion cannot qualify as a real ingredient.
In a letter to the bakery on Sept. 22, FDA wrote, "Your Nashoba Granola label lists ingredient 'Love.'" The letter continued, "'Love' is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient."
However, FDA in a statement acknowledged that the inclusion of "love" in the ingredients list was "not among the agency's top concerns." Rather, FDA cited concerns about certain Noshoba products that were "prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby they may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby they may have been rendered injurious to health."
'So George Orwell,' bakery CEO says
Nashoba CEO John Gates said the company will comply with FDA's letter and send the agency a response plan detailing how the bakery plans to resolve all the agency's cited violations and "ensure that similar violations will not recur." Gates said that while some of the observations, such as the sanitation notes, were helpful, he was disappointed with others. He said the love dispute "just felt so George Orwell."
Gates said, "I really like that we list 'love' in the granola." He added, "Situations like that where the government is telling you you can't list 'love' as an ingredient, because it might be deceptive, just feels so silly."
FDA in a statement said it "expects the company to correct the serious violations [about insanitary conditions] found on FDA's inspection, as noted in the warning letter" (Edney, Bloomberg, 10/3; Baker, "Vitals," Axios, 10/4).
From healthy food access to stable housing: The case for collaboration with community partners
Population health leaders know that health care delivery is incomplete without addressing the social determinants of health. But effective patient management cannot only include tasking care teams with addressing patients' social needs on top of their complex clinical needs.
Instead, providers should also partner with community-based organizations already providing quality non-clinical support for a range of needs, from healthy food access to stable housing, to scale patient management beyond traditional care settings.