Mother Jones
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Last Friday, the Anglo-Dutch mega-conglomerate Unilever, owner of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, filed suit against the vegan upstart Hampton Creek, maker of egg-free Just Mayo, citing “false advertising and unfair competition,” and whining claiming that “Just Mayo already is stealing market share from Hellmann’s.”
Unilever, which long ago swallowed Ben & Jerry’s, Breyer’s, Lipton, Mrs. Filbert’s, Slimfast, Close-Up, Noxzema, Q-Tips, Vaseline, and hundreds of other brands into its multinational maw, argues that “Hampton Creek’s materially false and misleading Just Mayo name, packaging, and advertising has caused and unless restrained will continue to cause great and irreparable injury to Unilever.” That irreparable injury—for which Unilever requests that Hampton Creek change the name, remove all jars from shelves, and pay Unilever three times damages, plus attorney’s fees—comes because Hampton Creek is trying to pass off its eggless goop as mayonnaise, which “damages the entire product category, which has strived for decades for a consistent definition of ‘mayonnaise’ that fits with consumer expectations.” The FDA, Unilever correctly points out, defines mayonnaise as including an “egg-yolk containing ingredient.” Hampton Creek has fired back that, duh, that’s why they call their product mayo, not mayonnaise. But this seems a little shifty, considering that on their website they’ve referred to Just Mayo as “an outrageously delicious mayonnaise.”
Read our past coverage of the hackers trying to make fake eggs better. Ross MacDonald
Mayo 101: Oil and water hate each other. Shake them up in a bottle, and they’ll retreat to their respective corners as quickly as possible. But sometime in the 1700s, some proto–molecular gastronomist discovered that if you add an egg to the mix, its unique lipoproteins will run interference, forming a thicket of long molecules that trap the oil droplets and prevent them from coalescing and rising to the surface. Sauce Mayonnaise was born, and quickly swept the Continent. That was pretty much the end of innovation in the mayonnaise sector, until recently, when Hampton Creek hit upon a method of tweaking yellow pea proteins to act like egg proteins. Just Mayo was born. And quickly sued.
Read this article:
Big Mayo Wants You to Know There’s Only One Way to Make Mayo, Dammit
