Slashdot Mirror
Science Fair Project Exposes GlaxoSmithKline Lies
shadowspar writes "Despite claims made by GlaxoSmithKline that their Ribena soft drinks are high in Vitamin C, two New Zealand high school students found in their science fair research project that at least some formulations of the drink contained no detectable levels of the vitamin. As a result, GSK has been fined over $200,000 by the NZ Commerce Commission and ordered to run newspaper ads admitting that some of their drinks contain no Vitamin C."
"Slashdot. News for Nerds (two weeks after AP runs it and it appears on Yahoo's front page). Stuff that mattered."
I heard an interview with one of the girls. When they first tried to contact the company, they were stonewalled so they started contacting other people and the next thing they knew was they were on the international news.
For a company to ignore even fourteen year olds and hope they will just go away is really dumb. Better to deal with the problem before it gets big.
Anyway, what I understood the company to have said was something like: "The berries that this product is made from have more vitamin C than orange juice." The problem being, of course, that none of the vitamin C made it into the product.
Sugar does not cause diabetes:
i abetes
http://www.google.com/search?q=does+sugar+cause+d
You could say that sugar causes diabetes in the same way that cigarette lighters cause lung cancer.
Really, I remember quite good the glass in baby food (company was Gerber) in the late '80's and early '90's. I was still little back then and living in Europe, and even there we had reports of glass shards in baby food. Gerber seemed to try covering it up, but there were hundreds of reports in multiple COUNTRIES, and although the FDA said they didn't found any fractions harmful to babies, I believe that there was some heavy lobbying going on. But now we seemed to have forgotten all about it.
a lth&res=9A0DE3D71731F931A35750C0A960948260 and here is an essay on it including sources http://www.pillowrock.com/ronnie/gerber.htm
The NYT has this article from back in the days: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=he
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
For those who read the article,
The students *didn't* take their findings to the press. They turned their findings into the Commerce Commission who launched an investigation.
Vitamin C is destroyed when it is exposed to air. When fruit is turned into juice it is always exposed to air. Most fruit juices you buy from the supermarket that do have vitamin c, it is usually added to the juice just prior to bottling. So it is not entirely unexpected Ribena has little vitamin c content. However that does not make it right to mislead consumers. The Commerce Commission fined GlaxoSmithKline only $200k, basically to cover court costs etc, but let the consumers decide the real fine to GlaxoSmithKline by making them take out the advertisements. So it is up to you who are reading this to determine if you are going to fine GlaxoSmithKline by not purchasing their product. More alarming to me is that small bottles of sparkling Ribena contain very little if any vitamin C, but they do contain 11 teaspoons of sugar, which is 40% more than a bottle of Coke. This is what we all feed our children! Not any more.