Bryan v. Del Monte Foods
Food and Drug Law Institute, 2025
For the 2025 edition of Top Food and Drug Cases, a publication of the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI), Analysis Group Principal Rene Befurt, Vice President Anne Cai, and Associate Sai Sindhura Gundavarapu examine Bryan v. Del Monte Foods, a deceptive advertising class action involving “natural” claims made on food packaging. The plaintiff alleged that the terms “Fruit Naturals” and “Naturals” on the front label of Del Monte’s fruit cups misrepresented to consumers that the product contained only natural ingredients. Both the district and appellate courts found in favor of the defendant, citing the plaintiff’s failure to consider relevant contextual factors that could resolve ambiguity, including the ingredient list on the back label and consumers’ prior knowledge of the product category. Both courts also found the publicly available consumer surveys relied upon by the plaintiff to be irrelevant for assessing consumer perceptions of the product claims at issue.
In their discussion of the rulings, the authors highlight the courts’ emphasis on using “a more complete representation of the context” to understand consumer perceptions of natural claims. The courts’ critiques of the plaintiff’s failure to consider contextual factors extended to the publicly available consumer surveys cited by the plaintiff, which supported respondents’ understanding of what the term natural “should” mean, rather than assessing the message conveyed by the claims exactly as they appeared in the marketplace. The authors suggest that the Del Monte Foods rulings are instructive on the use of surveys in similar cases, noting that “[t]he courts’ discussion…indicates that a well-designed consumer survey that places consumers in the context of shopping for fruit cups…then presents them with the at-issue natural claims in the context of the at-issue label and asks about their interpretation of the label…could provide relevant empirical evidence to assess how a reasonable consumer may interpret natural claims.”
Read the article, shared with permission of FDLI