We’re bummed out.

A rad company is being bullied in the media with sensationalistic finger-pointing and it’s starting to remind us of a toddler screaming at a cool toy for no reason.

Let us be crystal clear. We’ve been working with Plum Organics to start an online convo about the honest, unfiltered moments of parenting. When this ridiculousness came up, they didn’t ask us to get involved but we just HAD TO, and this is by no means a sponsored post.
 

The Attack

Recently, Plum was attacked, along with other baby food makers, in a vague smear campaign, with legal threats and flaming accusations of having deceptive product labeling. Sadly, this led to Good Morning America picking up the goofy story. Slow news day much? Apparently.
 

The Accusation in a Nutshell

Since product ingredients are listed in order of quantity, a private health newsletter is claiming the naming of product flavors “are cheating parents financially, and robbing kids nutritionally, with these elaborate bait-and-switch schemes.” The examples given rant about the product names not matching the exact sequence of the ingredients. Interesting.

The problem with this line of attack is almost everything we eat is a combination of ingredients. We usually name them based on what they taste like not necessarily every major ingredient.

Let’s look at this from a parallel angle. By the same weird logic, someone might send back a bowl of soup (or flip the table it seems), at a restaurant because it was deceptively bulked out with an inexpensive filler like water when it’s clearly listed as “chicken noodle soup.”

Maybe some people like eating chunks of dehydrated chicken with crunchy, unboiled noodles. Most people don’t. And we can imagine babies probably wouldn’t like eating pure kale paste from a caulking gun, either.

Plum makes yummy, organic products without added garbage and they’re being attacked for “cynically exploiting parents’ desire to get the best for their babies.” Pfffft!
 

How Packaging Works…
and DOESN’T Work (by Andy Herald)

I have a lot of graphic design experience with food product packaging, from concept-to-shelf (through all the stringent FDA approvals). But since most people don’t know much about it, here’s a quick visual guide to how product packaging is supposed to be, and why this attack is so stupid.
 

Now, let’s look at what it would be like if packaging was labeled literally and solely by ingredient quantity.
 

We buy detergent knowing that “Summer Breeze” isn’t a smell, but prefer this naming to fragrance names like “Acetaldehyde ethyl cis-3-hexenyl acetal 28069-74-1.” No consumer gets mad at onion dip for not being mostly onion (gags a little at the thought), but this seems to be their argument.

Wait! Humans are around 65% water, so should doctors call babies wiggling water bags? Or maybe that’s still “misleading” and they should be called animated H20 vessels. Stupid.

The product descriptions on Plum’s pouches, and other baby foods, are so that we non-robot, non-lawyer parents can tell them apart by their unique characteristics. Their taste for instance. What has become really upsetting to us is that we know the tendency of a lot of the citizens of Internetland is to take alarmist “news” and run with it blindly.

Plum’s transparency and commitment to food products that are REAL, healthy and unperverted makes it all the more ironic that they’re being blasted for “misleading parents.” One has to ask how trustworthy a watchdog is when it begins barking at friends when it isn’t alerting us of intruders.

Their packaging clearly lays out what parents are getting. As with anything, it’s up to us to assess whether they’re the right choice for our kids. Charlie and I have both loved Plum products for years, and our happily healthy kids have, too.

GRRRRRRRRR! /rant