The Massachusetts-based bakery made international headlines after the FDA published a warning letter it sent to the bakery, highlighting the violations found in its May inspection. A small section titled "Misbranded Foods" included a bullet asking for "love" to be removed from the granola packaging. "Love is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient," the letter said.
"In nearly 20 years of labeling our granola that way, we had never been marked for that," Gates said. "I don't know why they brought it up now."
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The warning letter was sent to the company and published on the FDA's website after the company failed to respond to the FDA's initial report. Gates explained that companies are required to send a response to the FDA following an inspection, but something happened in the process. "I gave the task to an operations manager," he said. "I looked over the draft but didn't follow through on making sure the letter was sent certified mail or anything like that."
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"The letter was never received by the FDA, and that's why they sent the warning letter."
The warning letter also included violations about food contamination and cleanliness, but Gates said the language used in the letter made conditions sound worse than they really are.
"They use words like 'filth' and 'contamination' when they are referring to small flour residues," he said. "We have a cleaning company that brings in three people to clean for six hours a night, 365 days a year. They're not saying we have a pest problem or a rodent problem, nothing like that. This is not one of those health stories."
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How did "love" get on the ingredients list, anyway? Gates said the idea started way back at the company's beginning, after a customer asked him what they put in the granola to make it so good.
"I went and asked my then-partner, Karen, what she puts in the granola ... and she said, 'Well, what makes it different is that I make it with love,'" he said. "From there it just made so much sense to me to put it on the label." (Looking to change your diet for the better? Try the Metashred diet from Men's Health.)
Gates said that after a follow-up talk with the FDA yesterday, the company has decided to part ways with the long-standing label.
"We have removed love from the label," he said. "We will never take love out of the process."