Cholula Lawsuit Claims McCormick Secretly Reformulated Hot Sauce With Cheaper Ingredients

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McCormick & Company, Inc. has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the global spice company has falsely labeled Cholula Hot Sauce as “Original” after reformulating the product to include cheaper, less traditional ingredients.

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The 17-page lawsuit claims that McCormick, which acquired the Cholula brand in November 2020, has maintained every distinctive and recognizable aspect of Cholula Original Hot Sauce’s packaging and appearance—including its wooden cap, font, colors, images of produce and “Abuelita” figure—despite “quietly” reformulating the hot sauce’s recipe with less traditional, lab-produced ingredients.

According to the lawsuit, McCormick touts in advertising and marketing materials that Cholula Original Hot Sauce is a premium “Authentic Mexican Hot Sauce” that is “crafted from a generations-old family recipe.” Prior to McCormick’s 2020 acquisition, Cholula Original Hot Sauce allegedly contained only water, arbol and piquin peppers, salt, vinegar, garlic powder, spices and xanthan gum.

After McCormick acquired Cholula, however, the spice giant altered the ingredients to reduce production costs, adding acetic acid and natural flavor while increasing the ratio of xanthan gum from the original recipe, the filing says. The lawsuit claims that McCormick misleadingly represents that consumers are still purchasing the “Original” hot sauce formulation even though the recipe has “materially changed.”

“[McCormick] is capitalizing on the goodwill from the product’s authenticity and historic recipe, as well as decades of ubiquitous marketing, while quietly reformulating the product with cheaper, less traditional ingredients,” the complaint claims.

The lawsuit says that one of the new ingredients, acetic acid, replaced vinegar as the fourth ingredient by weight on the hot sauce’s back-label ingredients list, while apple cider vinegar is now listed as the seventh ingredient. The suit cites a 1952 Food and Drug Administration compliance program manual that states that “diluted acetic acid is not a vinegar of any kind” and advises against using acetic acid as a substitute for vinegar in products consumers generally expect will contain vinegar.

Moreover, the complaint says that xanthan gum, a lab-created food thickener and stabilizer previously listed as the hot sauce’s final ingredient, is now the fifth ingredient. To make matters worse, the filing states, the reformulated hot sauce now includes “natural flavor,” which the case says is typically made up of highly processed chemical additives.

The lawsuit argues that McCormick’s marketing, including the “iconic” Cholula branding, is misleading to consumers who believe they are purchasing the “Original” recipe. The filing conveys that consumer complaints on social media indicate the reformulation has not gone unnoticed.

“The [hot sauce’s] front label misleads reasonable consumers into believing that the product is the authentic, one-of-a-kind Mexican hot sauce,” the lawsuit says. “However, this is not the case because the [hot sauce] now includes additives that were not present even a few years ago, let alone generations ago.”

Furthermore, the lawsuit notes that McCormick has removed statements on its website that Cholula is imported from Mexico. The case says this could indicate that the product, which was made in Jalisco, Mexico “for decades,” is or will no longer be produced in Mexico, further reducing the hot sauce’s authenticity.

The McCormick class action lawsuit looks to cover all consumers who purchased Cholula Original Hot Sauce in New York during the relevant statute of limitations periods.

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