What Is Actually Inside That Bar

Simply Delicious, Inc., operating as Bobo’s and headquartered in Loveland, Colorado, manufactures and sells “PB&J” soft-baked oat bars in strawberry and grape flavors. These bars are stocked at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Walmart, Target, Sprouts, and Amazon. They are everywhere. They are impossible to miss.

A single 60-gram bar contains 15 grams of added sugar (grape) or 16 grams of added sugar (strawberry). That is roughly one-quarter of the total weight of the bar, by mass, composed of added sugar. The complaint notes that added sugar in the form of cane sugar, brown rice syrup, and rice syrup is the third, fourth, and fifth most-used ingredient by volume, appearing after oats and before any fruit concentrate, fruit extract, or actual flavoring.

In other words, Bobo’s puts more sweetener into these bars than it puts strawberry or grape. The fruit is almost an afterthought. The sugar is the point.

The Numbers That Tell the Real Story

The American Heart Association recommends children aged 8 to 18 consume no more than 25 grams of added sugar per day. A single Bobo’s bar delivers 15 or 16 grams, which is 64 percent of a child’s entire daily recommended limit in one snack. The complaint states plainly: “A single 60-gram Bobo’s bar thus contains 2/3rds of the recommended daily consumption of added sugars for children and teens.”

For adults, the FDA’s daily recommended value is 50 grams of added sugar, a number the FDA itself set at that level because stricter thresholds were considered “unrealistic” given how much sugar Americans already eat. Even measured against this softer, compromise ceiling, a single Bobo’s bar accounts for roughly one-third of the adult daily maximum.

The complaint further highlights a critical biomedical threshold: scientific literature cited in the filing places the point at which sugar begins to function as a liver toxin at somewhere between 12 and 38 grams per day, depending on age and sex. At 15 to 16 grams per bar, a child who eats one Bobo’s bar is already flirting with, or potentially exceeding, the lower bound of that toxic threshold for their age group.

The lawsuit was filed on July 9, 2025. The plaintiffs are Christina Hankins, a San Diego resident who purchased the products from Costco in May 2024 and via Instacart from Sprouts in February 2025, and Dimari Benavidez, a Vallejo resident who purchased the products from a Costco in January 2025. Both allege they made additional purchases throughout the class period.

The lawsuit seeks class certification on behalf of all California consumers who bought Bobo’s PB&J bars within the past four years. The total claimed damages exceed $5,000,000 (enough to pay for school lunch for roughly 10,000 low-income California kids for an entire year).

The Label Was Designed to Deceive You in One-Tenth of a Second

The complaint is direct about what Bobo’s did: the company painstakingly and intentionally designed its Products’ labels to deceive consumers into believing the bars are healthy or conducive to good health and physical activity. The word “painstakingly” is in the legal filing. This was not a mistake. This was a strategy.

The front of the package carries the claims “wholesome,” “simple ingredients,” “nutrient dense,” “Non-GMO,” “Dairy Free,” “Vegan,” “Plant Based,” and “Baked With” a heart symbol, alongside pictures of fruit. Each of these claims is specifically chosen. Academic consumer research cited in the complaint demonstrates that more than three-quarters of consumers perceive a close connection between “natural” claims and “healthy” claims, even though naturalness, in a scientific sense, says nothing about whether a food is healthy or safe.

The complaint explains the mechanism Bobo’s exploits: marketers know shoppers take approximately one-tenth of a second to form an impression of a product on a shelf. In a supermarket stocking about 50,000 products, buyers “satisfice,” scanning quickly and making a “good enough” decision. Bobo’s designed its label specifically to win that tenth-of-a-second impression by stacking every available “natural” and “clean” signal on the front of the packaging.

The Premium You Paid for a Lie

The complaint alleges Bobo’s used the manufactured health image to extract a price premium from consumers. Plaintiffs say they paid more for these bars than the product was worth, and that they would not have bought them at all, or would have paid significantly less, had the true sugar content been honestly represented on the front of the label.

This is the economic core of the injury. Every dollar of premium Bobo’s collected above what these bars would have fetched with an honest label is, the suit alleges, money the company collected through fraud. The complaint calls for disgorgement of those profits, meaning Bobo’s would have to give back the money it made from the deception.

The complaint also notes that the Consumer Brands Association, the food industry’s own trade group, has a voluntary program called “Facts Up Front” that places added sugar content directly on the front label, in clear icons. Bobo’s sells bars that compete directly with products using this transparency system. Bobo’s chose not to use it.

The Cost You Can’t Measure in Dollars

When a company markets a product directly at children and their parents using language engineered to signal health, and that product delivers a sugar load that scientists link to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, multiple cancers, and chronic inflammation, the dollar amount of a lawsuit captures only the surface of the harm. The real accounting runs deeper and lasts longer.

Parents made a choice in the supermarket aisle. They grabbed something labeled “wholesome” and “nutrient dense” and thought they were doing the right thing for their kid. That is the specific population Bobo’s aimed at: the complaint calls children aged 8 to 18 “the target consumer market for this product.” These families were not naive. They were working with information that was deliberately corrupted. The trust exploited here is parental trust, the kind that forms the emotional foundation of how families feed their children.

The complaint documents that overconsumption of sugar has been shown to prompt craving and withdrawal symptoms similar to those triggered by alcohol and cocaine. This is not a rhetorical flourish; it is a finding from peer-reviewed neuroscience cited in the filing. A child who eats these bars regularly, lured in by the “healthy snack” positioning, may be building a metabolic dependency that outlasts the product itself. The addiction does not end when the bar is eaten.

The complaint also documents a deeply troubling equity dimension. Added sugar intake in the United States “tends to be highest among minorities, those who are poor, and those with lower education levels,” according to research cited in the filing. Bobo’s products are sold at Costco and Walmart alongside Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, reaching across income brackets. A low-income parent making a fast grocery decision, trusting the “plant-based” and “vegan” label to signal nutritional responsibility, is the person least able to absorb the long-term health costs of that deception. The consequences of diet-related disease, the medical bills, the lost work days, the shortened lives, fall hardest on the families who had the fewest resources to investigate the label in the first place.

The complaint specifically addresses the mechanics of this betrayal. Bobo’s knew, through the science of consumer behavior, that shoppers confronted by 50,000 products in a supermarket would spend approximately one-tenth of a second forming a first impression. The company spent real resources, employed real designers, and made deliberate decisions to maximize the health impression within that tenth of a second. Every word on the label, “wholesome,” “simple,” “nutrient dense,” “Baked With” a heart symbol, was a calculated move. The deception was not accidental labeling. The deception was the label.

When plaintiffs Christina Hankins and Dimari Benavidez bought these bars at their respective Costcos, they were not simply buying an overpriced snack. They were buying into a product identity Bobo’s manufactured from the ground up: the identity of a health food. That identity was false. And the complaint alleges that without it, they would not have bought the product at all, or would have paid substantially less. The economic injury and the dignitary injury are inseparable. They paid money to be deceived about something they cared about, feeding themselves and their communities well.

Direct from the Complaint: Bobo’s in Their Own Context

“Bobo’s formulates, manufactures, distributes, and sells ‘PB&Js,’ a soft-baked oat bar with a peanut butter-flavored crust and strawberry or grape filling, meant to replicate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich… A serving of a single 60-gram bar contains 15 grams (grape flavor) or 16 grams (strawberry flavor) of added sugar, or about one-quarter of the total weight of one of the bars.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraphs 34 and 36

“In each flavor of the Products, added sugar in the form of cane sugar, brown rice syrup, and rice syrup [is] third- through fifth-most used ingredient by volume, after oats and before any fruit concentrate, fruit extract, or flavoring.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 37

“To sell these Products, Bobo’s employs a marketing strategy designed to give consumers the erroneous impression that they are healthy or are conducive to good health and physical activity and well-being.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 40

“Defendant painstakingly and intentionally designed its Products’ labels to deceive consumers into believing that the Products are healthy or are conducive to good health and physical activity and well-being, especially by repeated emphasis on the ‘naturalness’ of the Products, which conveys to reasonable consumers that the Products are healthy.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 49

“Instead of receiving products that had actual healthful qualities, the Products that Plaintiffs and the Class received were not healthy. Instead, consumption of these Products causes increased risk of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and other morbidities, as set forth herein.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 57

“Defendant did so for the purpose of enriching itself and it in fact enriched itself by doing so. Consumers conferred a benefit on Defendant by purchasing the Products, including an effective premium above their true value. Defendant appreciated, accepted, and retained the benefit to the detriment of consumers.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraphs 91 and 92

“Unless a class-wide injunction is issued, Defendant will likely continue to advertise, market, promote, and sell its Products in an unlawful and misleading manner, as described throughout this Complaint, and members of the Class will continue to be misled, harmed, and denied their rights under the law. Defendant continues to mislabel the Products in the manner described herein and sell them to the consuming public.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 74

This Is Bigger Than One Snack Bar

Public Health

The complaint grounds its claims in a documented national health catastrophe. Since the 1960s, new food technologies unleashed high-fructose corn syrup and its relatives into the American food supply. Fructose consumption increased more than 100-fold from 1970 to 2000. Today, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. population exceeds recommended intakes of added sugars, according to the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee cited in the filing.

The medical consequences are not hypothetical. The complaint cites peer-reviewed research linking overconsumption of added sugar to overweight and obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, various cancers, and chronic inflammation. These are not fringe findings; they come from journals including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, JAMA Internal Medicine, and the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.

The liver toxicity threshold documented in the complaint is especially alarming in the context of Bobo’s marketing to children. The science cited in the filing places the point at which sugar begins acting as a liver toxin at somewhere between 12 and 38 grams per day, depending on age and sex. A child eating a Bobo’s strawberry bar takes in 16 grams of added sugar from that single snack. Before the child eats anything else that day, including breakfast cereal, juice, or another snack item (all of which carry their own added sugar loads), they may already be at or near the lower liver toxicity threshold.

The complaint also notes that added sugar has been shown to produce craving and withdrawal symptoms comparable to those generated by alcohol and cocaine. The implication for a product marketed as a healthy snack to children is serious: Bobo’s may not merely be selling a misleadingly labeled oat bar. It may be selling a product that creates repeat demand through the same neurological mechanisms that drive substance dependence.

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