Lawsuit Filed Against Blue Diamond Says Almond Milk Is Not Primarily Made With Almonds

Two people have filed a lawsuit against Blue Diamond accusing them of falsely advertising their Almond Breeze almond milk, according to Food Navigator.

The plaintiffs, Tracy Albert and Dimitrios Malaxianis, filed the lawsuit in New York. They state that the company claims their almond milk is made "primarily from almonds," but that almonds account for only two percent of the beverage, which is mostly made up of water, sugar, carrageenan, and sunflower lecithin.

Though there is no official rule about how many almonds should be in almond milk, the lawsuit states that "Upon an extensive review of the recipes for almond milk on the Internet, the vast majority of the recipes call for one part almond and three or four parts water, amounting to 25 to 33 percent of almonds."

Therefore, the plaintiffs say that Blue Diamond's almond milk advertising is misleading because people are led to believe that it is made primarily with almonds when it is not.

In 2012, the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority addressed a similar problem when some shoppers complained that almond milk labels were misleading. The ASA said, "We considered that, while consumers might not be aware of exactly how almond milk was produced, they were likely to realize... that the production of almond milk would necessarily involve combining almonds with a suitable proportion of liquid to produce a 'milky consistency.'"