Little Real Cheese in Totino’s Frozen Pizza Rolls Class Action

General Mills Sales, Inc. makes Totino’s frozen cheese pizza rolls. The complaint for this class action alleges that the representations on the box are false, deceptive, and misleading because they “cause consumers to expect the Product contains a non-de minimis amount of ingredients associated with pizza, such as cheese” while “the cheese used is almost entirely imitation cheese instead of traditional cheese.”

Two classes have been defined for this action:

• The Illinois Class is all persons in Illinois who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.
• The Consumer Fraud Multi-State Class is all persons in Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, and Montana who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.

The first page of the complaint shows an image of the front of the box, which bears the words “Totino’s Pizza Rolls” in the center of its front, as well as “Pizza in a Golden Crust,” “Cheese,” and “Naturally Flavored,” as well as images of the pizza rolls, with one roll torn or bitten in half to show what appears to be red tomato sauce and white cheese.

Pizza does not have a standard of identity, so the Code of Federal Regulations requires that it be labeled with its “common or usual name” indicating characterizing properties or ingredients.

The complaint says, “Where the characterizing ingredient (1) has a material bearing on the food’s price or its acceptance by consumers or (2) creates an erroneous impression it is present in a greater amount than it is, the common or usual name is required to include its percentage.”

Consumers favor real cheese, the complaint claims, because it is a natural food. It claims that milk and dairy products “are reservoirs of energy, because they contain a range of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, minerals, and vitamins.”

In contrast, according to the complaint, imitation cheese is made of vegetable oils, corn starch, and casein, ingredients that “are highly processed with added chemicals and preservatives.” The complaint alleges, “Imitation cheese has unhealthy fats and lacks the nutrients found in real cheese” and “has a rubbery texture.”

The complaint thus contends that the representations on the box are misleading, because the expected cheese has been replaced with imitation cheese.

Page 4 of the complaint shows an image of the ingredient panel, with “Imitation Mozzarella Cheese” as the third ingredient. In the “Contains less than 2% of” part of the list are “Rehydrated Fat Free Mozzarella Cheese” and “Rehydrated Enzyme Modified Cheese,” the only real dairy ingredients.

The complaint claims, “The representations are misleading because the Product’s common or usual name, ‘Pizza in a Golden Crust,’ does not include the percentage of the characterizing cheese ingredient” which it claims should be expressed as “Contains ____% Cheese.”

Although the front label appears to try to circumvent the problem with the words “Naturally Flavored,” the complaint alleges that “this is insufficient to overcome the misleading common or usual name.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Contains Too Little of Featured Ingredients, Deceptive Advertising, Deceptive Labels, Imitation Product or Imitation Ingredients Not So Labeled