False ad prize: Sugar baby food, chicken-less soup

BERLIN, Oct. 1 (UPI) —

A German group gave a sugar-packed Nestle baby food the "Golden Cream Puff" false advertising prize, with second place going to a chicken soup with no chicken.

The Foodwatch group said nearly 160,000 Germans voted from a list of five finalists to award the "Golden Cream Puff" prize, Goldene Windbeutel, which also means "windbag" in German, to Nestle for the "Alete" liquid baby food, which is advertised as rich in calcium and vitamin D.

The food, which bears the image of ears of corn on its packaging, is actually extremely high in sugar, Foodwatch said.

"These high calorie liquid meals lead to overfeeding and tooth decay. Doctors have been warning against them for a long time," the group said.

Foodwatch said the second place finisher in the "Golden Cream Puff" vote was a Knorr brand "Chicken Soup," manufactured by Unilever, that doesn’t actually contain any chicken. The packaging also claims the product does not contain any additives, but Foodwatch said it does contain a flavor enhancer.

Coca-Cola’s Glaceau Vitaminwater was the third place finisher in the vote, with Foodwatch saying that despite health claims on the product’s website, it is "cheap water pepped up with flavorings, colorings and added vitamins," making it "a typical ‘functional food’ product invented to suck money out of consumers’ pockets."

The other two items making the watchdog’s top five were Mondelez Belvita "breakfast biscuits," which indicate on their packaging that they are a healthy breakfast food but actually contain an unhealthy amount of sugar, and Coop’s "Our North" organic apple juice, which is advertised as containing apples "from the region" but is not actually manufactured from apples grown in northern Germany.