Food Fight

When does mixing apple juice and grape juice yield cherry juice? Simple: When the manufacturer says it does. So complains the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that is pressing the Food and Drug Administration for rules requiring companies to reveal on labels the percentages of various juices in their fruit-juice blends.

Last week the group released a survey of leading brands showing that the ingredients now imprecisely listed on the backs of labels do not add up to the claims made on their fronts. "Manufacturers are cheating consumers by passing off what is mostly apple and grape juice as more expensive kiwi, papaya, raspberry and cherry juice," declared C.S.P.I. legal-affairs director Bruce Silverglade. "If a company is selling strawberry-flavored apple-grape juice, then that's what the product should be called."

The fruit-juice industry dismissed last week's charges as sour grapes. "If C.S.P.I. had its way, food labels would consist of nothing but green lights, red lights, sirens and warnings," said John Cady, president of the National Food Processors Association. Apple juice is used to give fruit beverages a pleasant taste, the industry maintains; publishing actual percentages would disclose trade secrets without providing any additional nutritional information.