REFLECTIVE MOMENTS
Who puts the ginger in Ginger Ale?
I have a health dilemma that might need to be referred to my friendly singing doctor for treatment. Over the length of my six decades when aches and nausea had me clutching my painful stomach, the cure was never in doubt. It started with my mother’s cool hand and a glass of stale Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Ginger ales of other brands weren’t nearly as effective in settling those previously mentioned contretemps of the digestive system.
Canada Dry Ginger Ale was the remedy always offered and it worked. I never could understand the science of a stale soft drink being able to cure a stomach ache and stop the nausea but I cared less about science than I did about not being sick.
That Mother-knows-best health care knowledge went with me when I left home and continues to be a tried and true method, with the “ginger” part of the treatment being researched by others and touted as the true healing ingredient.
So still oblivious to scientific studies of the contents of my favourite beverage, with or without the bubbles, it was a shocking breakfast event to read the headline that Canada Dry would stop claiming that real ginger is used in the beverage — to avoid a class action trial in the United States.
What? What? I moved aside my freshly squeezed orange juice to read the story that followed. “. . .Canada Dry Ginger Ale will no longer claim to be made from real ginger as part of a proposed settlement to a series of U.S. class-action lawsuits over false advertising.” A New York lawyer evidently did some research to discover that the actual ginger content is two parts per million which is below the threshold for human taste. And worse, this amount is far lower than any amount that could have health benefits.
In addition to removing the claim of real ginger from the product in the United States, the company will offer payments to people who purchased Canada Dry for personal use in the United States since 2013 — capped at $5.20 per household without proof of purchase and at $40 per household with proof of purchase.
Canadians like Yours Truly will not be able to claim any sort of payment, either with or without cash register receipts. Only in the United States would someone come up with lawsuits over the ginger in Ginger Ale. Meanwhile in Canada, where I’m still in shock, the Canada Dry Ginger Ale producer will not make any changes to advertising material aimed at Canadian drinkers. We citizens of the Northern part of North America will still be told the beverage is made with real ginger — and thus we will continue to offer a glass of stale beverage to calm the butterflies in our stomachs.
This whole ginger ale crisis is a bit ironic: on our last trip to those United States of America, it was nearly impossible to be served any kind of ginger ale in a restaurant unless it was the bar variety that was already stale. And the vending machines we saw were devoid of any form of ginger ale.
So what’s the deal with the ginger ale lawsuits in this same country? Odd. Just be careful, makers of Ginger Gravol. If your claim isn’t quite truth in advertising, you too might have to offer a payment of $5.20 per household. I will start hanging on to my receipts just in case.