September 8, 2008

New Moon Kitchen: Three strikes and you’re . . .


Last week, I wrote about a manufacturer of “totally natural” and “vegan” cookies (among other items) who was using ingredients such as refined sugar and manufactured vanillin and not putting them on their label.

Well, the you-know-what hit the fan and, as promised, I have some updates.

Strike one: New Moon Kitchen hides ingredients on 50% of their cookies
You’d never know they used refined sugar or vanillin because it is not on their label. I only found out because I asked what, exactly, was in those chocolate chips. And, boy, was I surprised.

Strike two: New Moon Kitchen is breaking the law by hiding ingredients
“Ingredients and their components (ingredients of ingredients) must be declared by their common names in the list of ingredients on a food label,” according to section 2.8.1 of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Guide to Food Labelling and Advertising.

Tsk, tsk, New Moon Kitchen.

Strike three: New Moon Kitchen uses refined sugar
Their products are promoted to vegans. You see any vegans waltzing out of the supermarket with a 5 lb bag of refined sugar lately? Me neither. Think they’d quit eating these cookies if New Moon Kitchen fully disclosed their ingredients? Me too.

Strike four: The sugar in New Moon Kitchen chips is from a manufacturer that uses bone char
Bone char is the charred bones of dead animals. It is often used to refine sugar.

New Moon Kitchen says the sugar in their chips are not refined with bone char. The company that makes that sugar counts bone char as one of their refining methods. I’d hate to support any bone char use, wouldn’t you?

Strike five: New Moon Kitchen is not the “totally natural” company they claim
According to a post on this topic in the worth-reading blog, Treehugger, the vanillin used by New Moon Kitchen in half of their cookies “. . . is an artificial vanilla flavor . . .”

According to an email I received from an employee of New Moon Kitchen, Eden, the owner was “horrified” when she learned there was vanillin in their cookies.

I concur.

Strike six: New Moon Kitchen still has not updated it’s Website or it’s ingredient list
Come on, I can update my site in, oh, two minutes. You can’t be bothered to put up a little note? Maybe an apology? Even just a notice about the ingredients?

Shame.

New Moon Kitchen: No claim on perfection
The whole thing is a shame with New Moon Kitchen screaming “totally natural” then turning around and hiding their use of refined sugar and manufactured vanillin while pushing their product to vegans.

Eden, the owner of New Moon Kitchen justifies all this by saying she “. . . give no claim on perfection.”

Exactly.

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Comments

7 Responses to “New Moon Kitchen: Three strikes and you’re . . .”

  1. Maria
    September 8th, 2008 @ 6:03 pm

    Thank you for not only exposing this, but also for the follow up. I am new to being a vegan, and I find it hard enough to find foods (other than raw veggies) that I can trust are truly vegan.

    And shame on New Moon Kitchen for not posting an update or note on their products page.

  2. My Year Without
    September 9th, 2008 @ 7:35 am

    I had not heard of this brand yet, but my plight this year has been to go without sugar (all white refined sugar and corn syrups) all year. When I read your post, I hurried and looked up New Moon just in case I had had any this year but they are unfamiliar to me.
    Thanks for doing this kind of research. Going without sugar has had its challenges, and constantly reading ingredients labels has been one of them. I have to trust the label before I buy anything, but now I wonder about that!
    I have found a wonderful brand of sugar free cookies that are vegan, I think, too. “Nana’s” cookies are sooo good and are fruit juice sweetened.
    There is someone else out there posting about whistle-blowing, namely, health food stores who call themselves healthy but really just sell a bunch of unhealthy food disguised as healthy: http://paynowlivelater.blogspot.com/

    anyway, enjoy and keep up the great work!

  3. jennconspiracy
    September 9th, 2008 @ 11:27 am

    Wow – you’d think “totally natural” was a claim, anyway.

    Your comment about vegans and 5# bags of refined sugar cracked me up – I actually bought a 50# bag of unrefined evaporated cane sugar because I’ve been using so much in my canning (I do low sugar recipes but I have been processing a lot of fruit!).

    Getting that bag of sugar home required someone with a car — I don’t think I could have managed that on my bicycle!

    Back on point – all the more reason to MAKE YOUR OWN COOKIES! Woo! Yum.

  4. Kati
    September 10th, 2008 @ 12:01 pm

    Good for you for doing some serious digging! Hidden ingredients are infuriating. Shame on New Moon.

    Thanks for visiting my blog, by the way! I’ll see you again soon. :-)

  5. Mike Foster
    September 11th, 2008 @ 1:58 am

    Lesson learned: can’t trust all labels…and DO NOT buy New Moon Kitchen products.

    peace,
    mike
    livelife365
    Just Do It? Ten Tips to Get You Started

  6. Jackie
    September 11th, 2008 @ 5:32 am

    McDonalds paid out $10M for failing to disclose the use of animal products in chips it identified as vegetarian. New Moon Kitchen should take note.

  7. My Year Without
    November 8th, 2009 @ 6:31 pm

    I had not heard of this brand yet, but my plight this year has been to go without sugar (all white refined sugar and corn syrups) all year. When I read your post, I hurried and looked up New Moon just in case I had had any this year but they are unfamiliar to me.
    Thanks for doing this kind of research. Going without sugar has had its challenges, and constantly reading ingredients labels has been one of them. I have to trust the label before I buy anything, but now I wonder about that!
    I have found a wonderful brand of sugar free cookies that are vegan, I think, too. “Nana's” cookies are sooo good and are fruit juice sweetened.
    There is someone else out there posting about whistle-blowing, namely, health food stores who call themselves healthy but really just sell a bunch of unhealthy food disguised as healthy: http://paynowlivelater.blogspot.com/
    </…, enjoy and keep up the great work!

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