Questionable and inconsistent calorie counts on some food products’ packaging were at the heart of a multi-year civil suit filed in Santa Barbara County Superior Court.
That suit concluded in early June when Judge Thomas Anderle ordered the Kroger Company, which owns Foods Co. stores in Lompoc and Santa Maria, to pay $1.25 million in civil penalties.
In court documents, Anderle described his judgement as “adequate to protect the public from the occurrence in the future of the conduct alleged.”
His verdict followed about two years of court proceedings that began in May 2024 when three district attorney’s offices—Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Riverside—jointly sued the Kroger Company for violating state laws regarding false advertising and unfair business competition.
Their complaint outlined instances from as early as 2018 where Kroger “misled consumers and gained an unfair competitive advantage by falsely representing the calorie content on multiple bread products advertised under the Kroger Carbmaster name,” Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Morgan Lucas wrote in court documents.
“California consumers—particularly those on specialty diets—care about the nutrition content of the products they purchase. As a result, many companies, including the Kroger Co., have developed products specifically targeting diet-conscious consumers,” the complaint states. “In most instances, defendant understated the calorie content of Carbmaster bread and related products by 20 percent to 50 percent, misleading consumers to believe they were purchasing a product that was considerably healthier than it was.”
The district attorney’s offices alleged that consumers began complaining in 2018 about some Carbmaster packaging, including hamburger buns marketed as 50 calories per bun when they were allegedly 100 calories per bun.
By 2022, some disputed calorie counts were amended on the back of Carbmaster bread products, “however, defendant continued to advertise inaccurate and false nutritional information on the consumer-facing portions of the packaging.”
In June 2022, a Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office investigator visited a Ralph’s store—owned by Kroger—in Santa Barbara to observe how certain Carbmaster products were marketed and displayed.
One display that the investigator photographed showed loaves of Carbmaster classic white bread neighboring loaves of Dave’s Killer Bread. According to their consumer-facing, front sides, Dave’s Killer Bread was marked at 70 calories per slice while Carbmaster advertised 30 calories per slice. A look at the latter’s back nutrition panel, however, showed a different number: 50 calories per slice.
“Unless enjoined by the court, defendant will continue its wrongful practices,” the complaint stated. “The court should issue a permanent injunction and such other orders as may be necessary to prevent future acts of unfair competition by defendant.”
With a June 19, 2026, deadline, Judge Anderle directed the Kroger Company to pay the $1.25 million penalty—including $334,000 to each district attorney’s office involved.
The remaining funds were split between the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office (to cover court filing and additional costs) and the California Consumer Protection Prosecution Fund, created by the state in 1989 to help enhance investigation and enforcement of consumer protection actions in California.
In court documents, one of Kroger’s Los Angeles-based defense attorneys, Jacob M. Harper, described the district attorney’s offices’ “efforts to ‘fix’ alleged packaging errors” as “overreaching.”
“This case raises a discrete issue of federal preemption: the district attorneys may not, as a matter of law, enforce federal standards regarding FDA [Food and Drug Administration] Panel labeling,” Harper argued in court. “Given that the FDA allows any of six prescribed methods for calculating caloric content, there is no single ‘accurate’ caloric content figure for a particular packaged food.
“A caloric content statement that complies with federal law may be ‘accurate’ under one method and ‘inaccurate’ under another,” Harper continued. “What matters is whether the statement complies with the federal standard—not whether they could be construed as misleading or false under general alternative standards supplied by state law.”
This article appears in June 25 – July 2, 2026.
