Cornbread or bread with corn? Jumbos honest approach
"And the winner of the Foodwatch Gouden Windei is……" Jumbo Goudeerlijk (‘Gold honest’) cornbread. Each year, Foodwatch nominates products it considers to be misleading. The public choice of the most misleading product wins the Gouden Windei (Golden Wind Egg). This 'honour' was shared by Jumbo. Foodwatch said it was because "the Goudeerlijk cornbread contains virtually no corn, apart from a few crumbs, and is only yellow due to the addition of turmeric extract".
The adverse publicity surrounding the Golden Wind Egg often has an effect: most manufacturers alter their products under public pressure, even if there's no other legal reason for doing so. The statutory assumption is, after all, that the consumer will read the ingredients list to see what ingredients are in the product, and how much. But Jumbo has announced that it's not changing the name of its cornbread. Why not? The cornbread contains 3% roasted corn and 2% corn grits. Jumbo says that cornbread needn't necessarily be made from corn meal. A sound argument? Doubtful. Case law tells us that the name or a striking image on the packaging can wrong-foot the consumer, thereby misleading him or her.
A quick glance at other supermarkets tells us that their breads containing corn specify wheat flour rather than corn meal as the top ingredient on the list. Yet again, very little corn meal is added. So you might say that the consumer knows (or might know) that cornbread always has a very small percentage of corn meal in it.
But … lots of other supermarkets put the word 'corn' after the word 'bread'. Not Jumbo: ‘Goudeerlijk Boeren Maïs brood’ (Honest Farmers Corn Bread). Calling it 'cornbread' will indeed have given consumers the idea that the bread contains a lot of corn. While a 'Brood Maïs' ('Corn Loaf') will strike the consumer as being something like a sesame loaf: the corn or sesame is added to the crust (with maybe some in the dough).
The addition of 'Goudeerlijk' (Honest) really raises the bar. This is how Jumbo indicates that the consumer can trust Jumbo’s product names. Legally, too, there's a lot to be said for Jumbo changing the cornbread and placing 'corn' as a specification after the word 'bread'. What’s in a name?
Ebba Hoogenraad