"monk fruit sweetener" plausibly should have more than 1.15% monkfruit

Grimbaldeston v. Saraya USA, Inc., 2025 WL 3677857, No. 25-cv-05649-RFL (N.D. Cal. Dec. 17, 2025)

Grimbaldeston brought the usual California claims based on allegations that Saraya deceptively overstated the amount of monk fruit in its sugar substitute. The court mostly declined to dismiss the case.

The back label describes the benefits of monk fruit and lists the ingredients: “Erythritol, Monk Fruit Extract.” Grimbaldeston alleged that testing confirmed that the Sweeteners contain 1.15% monk fruit extract, and that the remaining 98.85% is made up of Erythritol.

This was adequate to plead deception.  

In text that is more than twice as large as any other text on the front label of the product, the Sweeteners’ front label describes the product as “MONK FRUIT SWEETENER,” while the words “WITH ERYTHRITOL” are approximately one third of the size and written in a lighter color. The back label describes the health benefits of monk fruit, which it calls a “superfood” and “The Immortals’ Fruit.” The back label does not discuss Erythritol, other than listing it as an ingredient. At the pleading stage, Grimbaldeston has alleged that the amount of monk fruit extract in the Sweeteners is de minimis, and that a reasonable consumer would expect the Sweeteners to contain more than a de minimis amount of monk fruit, given the front label and the back label discussion.

Nothing on the label indicates the ingredient proportions, and the ingredient list reflects that the product contains more erythritol than monk fruit. “But even taking the ingredient list into account, it is plausible that a reasonable consumer would believe that a product prominently labeled ‘Monk Fruit Sweetener,’ and extolling the benefits of the fruit, would contain more than 1.15% monk fruit.”

Saraya argued that purchasers would know that a sweetener made “mostly of monk fruit” would be “cloying[ly] sweet,” and that “such products must contain a larger proportion of less-sweet ‘sugar alcohol’ ” to be a “one-to-one sugar replacement.” “While bee pollen collection is undisputedly common knowledge, it is plausible that an average consumer of sugar replacements would be unaware of the relative sweetness of monk fruit, even if they are aware of the supposed health benefits of monk fruit and specifically sought out a monk fruit product.” Also, even if so, “a reasonable consumer might plausibly have expected that the Sweetener was not primarily monk fruit while also expecting the product to have a non-negligible amount of monk fruit.”

Saraya also argued that because the “back label discloses that for a serving size of 8 grams, there are 8 grams of sugar alcohol (erythritol) ... [it] fully discloses that approximately 8 grams of each 8-gram serving is erythritol, not monk fruit.” But the word “erythritol” is not part of the “sugar alcohol” disclosure. A reasonable consumer plausibly wouldn’t know that only erythritol—and not monk fruit extract—contains sugar alcohol, or wouldn’t “connect the dots” to determine that nearly all of the Sweetener is comprised of erythritol.

The CLRA claim was, however, dismissed to provide the proper pre-suit notice.