Lawsuit Claims Cove Soda’s “No Artificial Sweeteners” Label Is Misleading

The Non-Financial Ledger

The plaintiff in this case was doing what a health system, and everyone around her, told her to do. A longtime soda drinker, she listened to friends and family who urged her toward better choices, and she reached for the bottle that promised no artificial sweeteners. She trusted the words on the can because a can is all a shopper has to go on.

That trust is the injury. The complaint describes a person who cannot taste, see, or test the difference between a natural sweetener and a manufactured one. She depended entirely on the label to tell her the truth, and the label, according to the filing, told her the opposite of what was in her hand.

The betrayal here is quiet and ordinary. It is the specific harm of being sold a healthier life story while drinking a product built from corn starch, engineered yeast, and chemical refining. Thousands of Californians, the complaint alleges, made the same trusting choice at the same shelves.

Legal Receipts

“The ‘No Artificial Sweeteners’ claim made by Cove on its cans and in its advertising is false. The soda purchased by Williams contains 10 grams of erythritol, and on information and belief, every flavor of the Products contains 8-12 grams of erythritol, generally the second most common ingredient in the Products after water.”

• This is the core factual charge: the sweetener the company says is absent is allegedly the second-largest ingredient in the drink.
• It applies not to one flavor but to every flavor the plaintiff is aware of, framing the conduct as systemic across the product line.

“Commercial erythritol such as that used in the Products is manufactured through a multistep process that starts with fermenting a strain of the microorganism Moniliella pollinis, a yeast, in a culture that contains liquid glucose or sucrose, an antifoaming agent, and a carbohydrate source that is usually corn starch from corn starch feedstocks, which do not contain erythritol in any amount.”

• The complaint sources this manufacturing description to an FDA-published GRAS determination, tying the “artificial” argument to a document the industry itself submitted.
• The starting feedstock contains zero erythritol, undercutting any suggestion that the sweetener is simply harvested from a natural source.

“Since commercial erythritol is manufactured through industrial fermentation and chemical processing—from processed corn/wheat starch, fermented with engineered microbes, and refined into a crystalline sweetener—it is a synthetic sweetener, which mimics but is not derived from the natural erythritol found in fruits.”

• This is the legal bridge: the filing labels the ingredient synthetic, directly contradicting the “No Artificial Sweeteners” claim.
• The distinction the complaint draws is mimicry versus origin; the substance imitates a natural compound but is not sourced from one.

“Defendant publicly disseminated untrue or misleading representations regarding the contents of its Products, which it knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, were untrue or misleading.”

• This is the knowledge allegation, asserting that Cove either knew the claim was false or should have known under a reasonable-care standard.
• It supports the fraud, unfair, and false-advertising counts by targeting Cove’s state of mind, not just the label text.

Public Deception: The Label Said One Thing

The complaint documents a gap between what Cove told shoppers across packaging and third-party retail listings and what it alleges was actually in the can.

• The back label of the products claims “No Artificial Sweeteners,” while the complaint alleges each flavor contains 8 to 12 grams of manufactured erythritol.
• Cove’s Walmart sales page allegedly twice describes the products as “naturally sweetened” and states they have “a pleasant taste without artificial additives,” language the complaint says is contradicted by the ingredient’s industrial origin.
• The complaint describes a wide-ranging internet and social media campaign, including Facebook ads and video on the Amazon and Target listings, that emphasized the “No Artificial Sweeteners” representation.

“It is not economically feasible to use erythritol extracted from fruits in commercial food products because of the very low levels found in fruits.”

The Anatomy of the “Natural” Sweetener

What the label presents as a simple natural product is, per the complaint, a multi-step industrial output. The breakdown below shows what actually goes into the erythritol Cove uses.

Regulatory Gray Zones: The Word “Natural” Has No Firm Meaning

The complaint builds its case around a term that consumers treat as meaningful but that regulation leaves loosely defined.

• The filing leans on academic research showing consumers conflate “natural” with “healthy,” with one review of surveys from more than 32 countries calling naturalness “crucial” to buyers.
• Because the erythritol is technically a sugar alcohol that occurs at trace levels in fruit, a company can gesture at a natural origin while using a version manufactured in a factory.
• The complaint argues that a reasonable consumer would not understand an ingredient produced through this industrial process to be consistent with a “No Artificial Sweeteners” claim, placing the fight squarely on how the term is understood rather than on any bright-line rule.
• It invokes California’s Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law and the False Advertising Law to convert this ambiguity into an alleged violation, using state consumer statutes to fill the gap left by loose labeling norms.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs: The Premium in the Word

The complaint alleges the deceptive label was not cosmetic; it allowed Cove to extract a higher price.

• The plaintiff alleges she would not have bought the products, or would have paid a substantially reduced price, had she known the “No Artificial Sweeteners” claim was false.
• The complaint states the deceptive labeling enabled Cove to charge a premium relative to key competitors or the average marketplace price.
• Using extracted fruit erythritol is described as economically infeasible, since 50 pounds of fruit yields roughly one gram, so the company used the manufactured version while allegedly keeping the natural-sounding claim.
• When used as a sweetener, erythritol levels are typically more than 1,000-fold greater than levels found naturally in fruits, a scale the complaint says is impossible to source naturally at commercial cost.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

The complaint frames the harm around consumers seeking healthier products and being steered by a claim they cannot independently verify.

• Consumers increasingly seek beverages free from artificial sweeteners because they associate them with a healthier, less processed lifestyle, a preference the complaint says is material to purchasing decisions.
• The plaintiff was specifically advised by friends and family to seek out healthier beverage alternatives and relied on the label to make that choice.
• Shoppers cannot confirm or disprove a “No Artificial Sweeteners” claim by viewing or even consuming the product, leaving them dependent on the manufacturer’s honesty.

Economic Inequality

The documented harm is economic: consumers across California allegedly paid more for a promise the product did not keep.

• Each Class member paid an effective premium above the products’ true value, a benefit the complaint says Cove accepted and retained.
• The Class is believed to number in the thousands, geographically dispersed throughout California, spreading small individual losses across a large group.
• Individual damages are small compared to the cost of suing, which the complaint notes would leave most consumers with little practical way to recover on their own.

The Settlement Isn’t Justice: Why Small Claims Go Unpunished

No settlement exists yet, but the complaint itself explains the structural trap that lets this kind of conduct persist.

• The complaint states the damages individual Class members suffered are small compared to the burden and expense of individual litigation, making it “virtually impossible” for consumers to redress the wrong alone.
• It warns that unless the Class is certified, Defendant will retain the monies received from the alleged conduct.
• It further warns that unless a class-wide injunction issues, Cove will likely continue to market and sell the products in the same allegedly misleading manner, and Class members will keep being misled.
• The relief sought includes not only restitution and disgorgement but a court-ordered corrective advertising campaign, an acknowledgment that money alone does not undo the deception.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

This Is the System Working as Intended

The complaint describes a market structure where a vague, appealing label pays for itself and the risk of getting caught is low.

• The absence of a firm regulatory definition of “natural” lets a company use a factory-made sweetener while making a natural-sounding claim, a gap the complaint tries to close only through private litigation.
• Because per-person losses are tiny, the complaint acknowledges consumers have “little incentive” to sue individually, meaning the conduct can continue unchecked absent a class mechanism.
• The complaint alleges Cove continues to mislabel and sell the products even as the suit is filed, showing the practice persists until a court forces a change.
• The price premium the complaint alleges means the deception is self-funding: the false claim generated the very revenue that makes the product profitable enough to keep selling.

What a Legitimate Fix Looks Like

This case exposes a core failure: a health-signaling label term with real market value and no reliable definition to back it. The following is editorial analysis, not a finding of the source document.

Regulatory Track

• Food regulators should set an enforceable standard for “natural” and “no artificial sweeteners” that accounts for industrial fermentation and chemical refining, so a factory process cannot hide behind a trace-in-fruit origin.
• Agencies should require that any ingredient produced through the multi-step process described in this complaint be disclosed as manufactured or synthetic on the label where naturalness claims are made.
• State enforcement under laws like California’s Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law should be resourced to act on health-signaling claims before private plaintiffs must fill the gap.

Legislative Track

• Legislators should codify a functional definition of “artificial sweetener” that turns on the production method, not the ingredient’s theoretical presence in nature.
• Lawmakers should strengthen statutory penalties tied to disgorgement of price premiums, so deceptive claims cannot remain profitable even after a lawsuit.
• Consumer-protection statutes should preserve and expand the class action pathway this complaint relies on, given that individual losses are too small to litigate alone.

Corporate Governance Track

• Cove should require sign-off from an independent compliance function before any health or naturalness claim reaches packaging or third-party retail listings.
• The company should reconcile its marketing language across every channel, including Amazon, Target, and Walmart pages, against the actual ingredient list and its manufacturing origin.
• Executive incentives should not reward revenue driven by claims that the company knew or should have known were unsupported.

What Now?

Direct your attention to Cove Drinks, Inc., a Delaware corporation headquartered in Dover, Delaware, and to the agencies that police food labeling.

• Watchlist: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which publishes the GRAS determination the complaint cites and oversees federal food labeling.
• Watchlist: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which polices deceptive advertising claims like the ones described here.
• Check your own shelves: if you bought a Cove soda in California carrying the “No Artificial Sweeteners” claim within the last four years, you may fall within the proposed Class.
• Organize locally by sharing label-reading know-how with friends and family, the same network that steered the plaintiff toward “healthier” choices in the first place.
• Support consumer-protection legal aid and class action clinics that make small-dollar deception cases like this one possible to bring at all.