ARE EVOLUTION FRESH DRINKS ‘POISON’?

 

QUESTION: ARE EVOLUTION FRESH DRINKS POISON? 

ANS: NO, EVOLUTION JUICE DOES NOT CONTAIN POISON

Rumours are circulating online that claim Evolution Fresh drinks are poison and that in order to save lives you should avoid drinking them. 

Sharing these false warnings serves only to spread misinformation and cause unnecessary fear and alarm in communities.

Outline:
Message circulating via social media warns people not to drink a brand of juice called “Evolution” because it contains poison. The message includes a photograph depicting the product as well as images of people that have supposedly died after drinking the juice.

Brief Analysis:
The claims in the message are utter nonsense. There are no credible news or health authority reports that support the claim that Evolution juice products have been contaminated or that any people have died from consuming the juice. The message is just a pointless hoax.

Evolution Fresh Juice is owned and distributed by giant US coffee store chain Starbucks and is sold in large quantities at Starbucks stores and selected retailers across the United States and Canada. If the product really did contain poison, then, of course, there would be official product recalls as well as widely-publicized warnings to consumers. However, there are no recalls for Evolution juice products listed on the US government recall websiteor any other official publication.  Nor are there any official consumer warnings about the juice.

Moreover, I could find no evidence to suggest that Starbucks Evolution Fresh Juice products are currently being distributed in the African countries listed in the message.

Evolution Fresh, as mentioned above,  is a subsidiary of Starbucks and consumers in the US can typically find the range of fruit drinks being sold in the popular coffee chain.

However we were unable to locate any reports or other reputable sources that could verify the rather vague claim that the drinks were “poison” or that they were being sold in Nigeria. The drinks brand is US-based and according to a paragraph in their About section, it appears the ingredients are sourced inside the US –

Most of the produce used for our juice is grown in Southern California, where we get leafy greens, crunchy root vegetables and tangy-sweet citrus based on seasonal growing patterns — from farms in Salinas down to the southern Imperial Valley in both California and Arizona. Who’s tracking it all down for us? Our ingredient-sourcing specialists, who have over 51 years of combined experience working with produce experts and growers around the world.

Additionally there are no known product recalls for any Evolution Fresh product from the FDA. A browse of their website turns up only one result for “Evolution Fresh” back from 2012 and affected an “Almond Butter” product, but this doesn’t appear to be the same brand.

If Evolution Fresh was indeed poison, we would imagine that considering a 2015 profile of the company claimed their California-based plant is capable of producing 9 million gallons of per year, reports of injuries or deaths as a result of the drink would not be hard to track down.

Alas there are no such reports. Given the warning doesn’t provide any sources or evidence to back up its claims that the drink is poison, and there have been no recalls of the product or anything about the drink on the FDA website, we can only dismiss this as a baseless hoax warning.

The image of the Evolution Fresh juice products used in the hoax message has been lifted directly from the Starbucks website. And, apparently in an effort to give the false warning more impact, the hoax perpetrator has added in two completely unrelated images showing dead – or perhaps just unconscious – human bodies.

In fact, this would-be warning appears to be just the latest in a long line of similar product contamination hoaxes that have circulated in various forms for several years. 

NOTE: Sharing these false warnings serves only to spread misinformation and cause unnecessary fear and alarm in communities.