Marketed as 'Italy's No. 1 brand of pasta,' Barilla sued over product not being made in Italy

[sl8]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2022/10/19/barilla-lawsuit-pasta-not-made-italy/10544234002/

Marketed as 'Italy's No. 1 brand of pasta,' Barilla sued over product not being made in Italy

Camille Fine
USA TODAY

Advertised as "Italy's No. 1 brand of pasta," the popular pasta brand Barilla will face a lawsuit over allegedly misleading consumers to believe that products made in Iowa and New York were actually made in the motherland of pasta, Italy.

A federal judge on Monday denied Barilla’s motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of misrepresenting its products. Judge Donna Ryu found that the company’s phrase, "Italy's No.1 brand of pasta,” could mislead consumers to believe that the pasta is made in Italy. In addition to the phrase, Barilla features the green, red and white colors of the Italian flag on the signature blue boxes.

In addition to asking the court to stop Barilla from using Italy’s likeness in marketing and on the alleged mislabeled product, plaintiffs are seeking monetary compensation, claiming they overpaid for pasta.

Barilla originated as a bread and pasta shop in Italy but is now based in Illinois. Barilla argues that its trademark is used to “invoke the company’s Italian roots through generalized representations of the brand as a whole,” not mislead buyers.

[...]

[jmowreader]

1. This is almost as silly...

...as the guy suing NC-based Garner Foods because he says the brand "Texas Pete" misleads consumers into thinking that hot sauce is made in Texas when it never has been.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. "Why this stuff's made in New York City!"

Pace Picante Sauce commercial - "Why this stuff's made in New York City!" - 1989

Shatner Method
25.6K subscribers

164,923 views Sep 18, 2013
Bad man draws losing hand when he flogs the wrong salsa: "Stranger, I hope you can beat a full house." KCPQ-TV Seattle-Tacoma,1989.

[keep_left]

5. Get a rope!

[70sEraVet]

8. Colbert was covering the 'Texas Pete' story, and he quipped,

"Wait till they see where Mars bars come from!"

[jmowreader]

12. Now, now...

Mars bars are named after the family who owns the company that makes them.

There is a Mars factory in Chicago which will soon be closing. When I was still driving truck I had to drive past that factory. I cannot imagine living around there because it's about half a mile from the road to the factory buildings, and you can smell chocolate all the way out in the street.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I thought all this time ...

You know whose pasta is made in Italy? Trader Joe's, and it's only a buck a pound.

Unless there's a sale, I always buy house brand. I figure spaghetti from North Dakota works as well as spaghetti from Italy.

[DBoon]

4. In college, we all thought Heineken was a cool imported beer

until we looked at the label and found out it was brewed in Azuza, CA

[mwooldri]

6. The next thing is that the person filing the lawsuit...

... will admit to believing that spaghetti grows on trees.

[70sEraVet]

9. Thanks for that, mwooldri!

I believe it was Jack Paar that first aired that spoof documentary. Supposedly, people wrote in, complaining that the husbands and wives were fighting over whether the thing was fake or not.
Oh, the good old days!

[mwooldri]

17. It was a BBC documentary.

Aired in 1957, on the "Panorama" programme . Normally Panorama does serious news, so the BBC got plenty of calls asking where they could get their own spaghetti tree. Richard Dimbleby (who narrated the Queen's Coronation btw) did the narration for this "documentary".

Jack Paar certainly did air the spoof, in the 60s.

On a side note the guy behind the spoof (Charles De Jaeger) once had an expense claim for a pair of dungarees denied because the BBC said he should have worn old clothes instead. A few weeks later, he got a reimbursement for entertaining a press officer by the name of Mr. Dungarees... Go figure...

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest

[leftieNanner]

7. I stopped buying Barilla

When the CEO showed himself to be a toxic homophobe.

[70sEraVet]

10. I think that CEO changed his tune, once he found out that queer people eat spaghetti, too.

[Takket]

14. Same!

I used to buy it until the owner said if people don’t like his homophobia that they can buy a different brand. “Deal!” I said. And I’ve never bought it since

[redwitch]

22. Same here!

I usually buy Prince spaghetti. Although I was disappointed to find out that it isn’t made by royalty.

[maxsolomon]

11. Is it sold in Italy?

It could be the #1 brand, IDK.

[jmowreader]

13. It really is the #1 brand in Italy. The labeling isn't inaccurate.

But I mean, come on: do you realize how friggin' much it would cost Barilla to ship all the pasta they sell in the US from Italy? That shit would be about five bucks a pound if it was really made in Italy.

[maxsolomon]

16. See post 2. TJ's imports pasta from Italy. It's cheap.

Sometimes I buy frozen pizzas made in Germany. They're no more expensive that Red Baron or Newman's Own.

[TheBlackAdder]

21. I get them too, they're very good.

[cloudbase]

15. It's one thing to believe yourself to be misled,

but what are the actual damages one incurs by believing that?

[Zeitghost]

28. Agreed

You may have bought it once based on the misbelief it was made in Italy. If you bought it again it's because you liked it.

What exactly were your real damages?

[Midnight Writer]

18. Ooooh, now do French Fries! And German Chocolate Cake! And Swedish Meatballs!

And Kansas City Barbecue Sauce!

I got a Horseshoe Sandwich and it didn't even have a single horseshoe in it! How long are we gonna let them rip us off like this?

[Wednesdays]

19. FWIW, "German" chocolate cake has nothing to do with the country of Germany.

In 1852 Samuel German, an English American Baker who worked for Baker’s Chocolate Company, created a new type of dark baking chocolate. German made a sweet baking chocolate which incorporated more sugar than the average semi-sweet baking chocolate. This chocolate was named Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate after its creator.

About 105 years after the creation of German’s Sweet Chocolate, The Dallas Morning News published a cake recipe by a Texas homemaker, Mrs. George Clay. She called her unique recipe “German’s Chocolate Cake” because it called for this brand’s sweeter variety of chocolate.

https://www.appleanniesbakeshop.com/the-history-of-german-chocolate-cake/

[TheBlackAdder]

20. Belgian Waffles invented in NYC.

[Celerity]

24. no, they were not

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_waffle

Originally showcased in 1958 at Expo 58 in Brussels, Belgian waffles were introduced to the United States by a Belgian named Walter Cleyman at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle in 1962, and served with whipped cream and strawberries. The waffles were further popularized in the United States during the 1964 New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York City. These waffles were introduced by Maurice Vermersch of Brussels, Belgium.

Largely based on a simplified recipe for the Brussels waffles, Vermersch decided to change the name to the Bel-Gem Waffle upon observing that many Americans could not correctly identify Brussels as the capital of Belgium. These waffles were served with whipped cream and strawberries, and they were sold for a dollar.

https://www.cooksinfo.com/belgian-waffles

HISTORY NOTES

In 1958, at the World Fair in Belgium, a man named Walter Cleyman sold waffles within the World’s Fair compound area. He served them topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit, and dusted with icing sugar. Previously, Americans had only experienced waffles with syrup on them. Cleyman sold around 400,000 waffles at the fair that year.

Cleyman won a place to sell his waffles again at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. To help him, he brought over from Belgium his wife, his two daughters, and his gas-powered waffle irons. He opened two waffle stands: one on Boulevards of the World, the other near the International Fountain. One was actually a large restaurant, on a corner, built in the style of a Belgian or Dutch building. Signage said, “Belgian Waffle House / Gauffres de Bruxelles.”

The fair opened on 21 April 1962. His waffles became the hands-down food favourite at the fair: he sold over 500,000 of them topped with whipped cream and fruit. He used strawberries as the standard fruit, but whenever he ran out of them, he would use pineapple. When the fair closed, Cleyman licenced his operation to Smitty’s Pancake House in Seattle, who then opened the “Belgian Waffle Chalet” near the university in Seattle.

[TheBlackAdder]

25. In Belgium, they weren't called Belgian or even Brussels waffles, but called Liege waffles.

.

When introduced in the US they were first called Brussels Waffles, but most Americans did not know where Brussels was.

So, they were renamed to Belgian Waffles for the World's Fair n NYC. They are not called Belgian Waffles in Belgium.

.

[Celerity]

27. Your claim was incorrect.The waffles themselves were not invented in NYC, which is what you claimed.

You are conflating an American-given name with the actual waffles, which came from Belgium, and were introduced to America by a Belgian. Simply renaming something does not equal invention.

Aslo, this:

In Belgium, they weren't called Belgian or even Brussels waffles

is also incorrect as there is a variety called Brussels waffles (Gaufres de Bruxelles) in Belgium, that dates back to the mid 19th century:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle#Varieties


Brussels

Brussels waffles are prepared with an egg-white-leavened or yeast-leavened batter, traditionally an ale yeast; occasionally both types of leavening are used together. They are lighter, crisper and have larger pockets compared to other European waffle varieties, and are easy to differentiate from Liège Waffles by their rectangular sides. In Belgium, most waffles are served warm by street vendors and dusted with confectioners' sugar, though in tourist areas they might be topped with whipped cream, soft fruit or chocolate spread.

Variants of the Brussels waffles – with whipped and folded egg whites cooked in large rectangular forms – date from the 18th century. However, the oldest recognized reference to "Gaufres de Bruxelles" (Brussels Waffles) by name is attributed from 1842/43 to Florian Dacher, a Swiss baker in Ghent, Belgium, who had previously worked under pastry chefs in central Brussels. Philippe Cauderlier would later publish Dacher's recipe in the 1874 edition of his recipe book "La Pâtisserie et la Confiture". Maximilien Consael, another Ghent chef, had claimed to have invented the waffles in 1839, though there's no written record of him either naming or selling the waffles until his participation in the 1856 Brussels Fair. Neither man created the recipe; they simply popularized and formalized an existing recipe as the Brussels waffle.

Liège

The Liège waffle is a richer, denser, sweeter, and chewier waffle. Native to the greater Wallonia region of Eastern Belgium – and alternately known as gaufres de chasse (hunting waffles) – they are an adaptation of brioche bread dough, featuring chunks of pearl sugar which caramelize on the outside of the waffle when baked. It is the most common type of waffle available in Belgium and prepared in plain, vanilla and cinnamon varieties by street vendors across the nation. In the United States, they are best known for being sold at ski resorts, mostly in the Northeast, under the Waffle Cabin brand.

Flemish

Flemish waffles, or Gaufres à la Flamande, are a specialty of northern France and portions of western Belgium. The original recipe, published in 1740 by Louis-Auguste de Bourbon in Le Cuisinier Gascon, is as follows: Take "deux litrons" (1.7 liters or 7 cups) of flour and mix it in a bowl with salt and one ounce of brewer's yeast barm. Moisten it completely with warm milk. Then whisk fifteen egg whites and add that to the mixture, stirring continuously. Incorporate "un livre" (490 grams or 1.1 pounds) of fresh butter, and let the batter rise. Once the batter has risen, take your heated iron, made expressly for these waffles, and wrap some butter in a cloth and rub both sides of the iron with it. When the iron is completely heated, make your waffles, but do so gently for fear of burning them. Cooked, take them out, put them on a platter, and serve them with both sugar and orange blossom water on top.




On the left: Brussels waffle, on the right: Liège waffle



Gaufres à la flamande

[niyad]

29. Thank you. That explains why there are suddenly waffles called Liege in my

store.

[Meowmee]

23. At first I thought Barilla was suing themselves from

The way it was written. It is still a crazy suit imo. It does not say it is made in Italy as far as I recall. I have been buying that brand at BJ’s on sale lately, I don’t eat pasta or any grains. I buy it for my brother who does. I don’t even remember seeing that it said that on the box anywhere, that shows how much attention I’m paying to things lately.