The FDA has effortlessly done what has eluded poets and musicians for centuries: they’ve defined love.
Despite what home chefs know about the care that goes into a great dish, a Massachusetts bakery has been told by the government that the word “love” should not be listed in the ingredients section of its granola because love is not an ingredient.
Not only is it not an ingredient, it turns out, the one thing humans have travelled across oceans for, longed for and started wars for, is none other than “intervening material.”
The official Food and Drug Administration inspection said:
Your Nashoba Granola label lists ingredient “Love.” Ingredients required to be declared on the label or labeling of food must be listed by their common or usual name. “Love” is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.
Bakery co-owner Stuart Will says the Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord feels “very strongly that love is a big part of what we do.” Witt says they have been in business for nearly 20 years, selling granola almost nearly as long. He says love has been listed on the label since the beginning.
“I really like that we list ‘love’ in the granola,” bakery CEO, John Gates told Bloomberg. “People ask us what makes it so good,” he added. “It’s kind of nice that this artisan bakery can say there’s love in it and it puts a smile on people’s face. Situations like that where the government is telling you you can’t list ‘love’ as an ingredient, because it might be deceptive, just feels so silly.”
The New England bake shop made was also cited by the FDA for failure to clean its facility properly, as well as unsanitary conditions where products were “prepared, packed, or held.”
Gates says the company has gotten positive reactions from people since the news began to circulate, but said they’ll comply with the FDA.
While it’s important to set non-deceptive truth-in-labeling regulations that help people make sense of what they’re eating, it sounds like some of the folks at the FDA are in need of a big bowl of that feelings-filled granola and a hug.
(h/t The Washington Post)
