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"Does highlighting a food for the ingredients it doesn&amp;#039;t contain constitute defamation? A British food labeling dispute with strong parallels in the United States has just been wrapped up, with courts deciding it does not. British retail chain Asda \u2013 owned by Wal-Mart, incidentally \u2013 came out on top in a dispute with Japanese food-making giant Ajinomoto after U.K. courts two weeks ago decided Asda&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;no hidden nasties&amp;quot; promotion was not a slur on the Japanese company. Two years ago, Asda began marketing its in-house Good For You brand as containing &amp;quot;no hidden nasties&amp;quot;. The promotion touted what the product   didn&amp;#039;t contain: artificial colors, flavors, hydrogenated fats, and the artificial sweetener, aspartame. Aspartame is known commercially as NutraSweet, Equal, NatraTaste, and SugarTwin. Ajinomoto, the world&amp;#039;s largest maker of the sweetener, hit the roof and charged the retail chain with spreading &amp;quot;malicious falsehood&amp;quot;. As it happens, we&amp;#039;ve seen similar cases here in the United States. Food-tech monolith Monsanto began filing lawsuits against dairies which advertised their products as not containing rBGH, the artificial growth hormone injected into cows to stimulate milk production. Monsanto, in a number of cases in different states, insisted that labeling a product as &amp;quot;rBGH free&amp;quot; was misleading to the public because it cast doubt on the safety of the protein hormone, which the Food and Drug Administration says is no different than naturally produced growth hormones. In April, then-Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius vetoed legislation which would have prevented dairies from labeling their products as rBGH-free (Sibelius is now Secretary of Health and Human Services). In many cases in other states, Monsanto pressured dairies and sought to influence governments \u2013 successfully in some instances \u2013 to prevent labeling which it found unfavorable. In the British decision, the court&amp;#039;s ruling wasn&amp;#039;t so much a statement against aspartame or Ajinomoto themselves; High court judge Mr Justice Tugendhat stated that he had no reason to believe the sweetener was a threat to public health. Asda&amp;#039;s marketing technique was a cue to consumers who already find the addition of artificial ingredients to be undesirable, he said. Ajinomoto has one more week to appeal the decision. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/food/news/a37482/whats-an-artificial-ingredient-to-do/>