Bethenny Frankel Continues To Promote Skinnygirl Drink Despite It Being Pulled From Shelves

DailyMail.co:

No one can accuse Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel of lacking bottle.


For the reality television personality is continuing to promote her drink Skinnygirl, which has been pulled form shelves for containing potentially cancer causing ingredients.


Bethenny, who left the popular show in 2010, was in South Beach, Florida to drum up interest in her cocktail mix drink.


The 40-year-old gave a presentation at the Food Network South Beach Wine and Food Festival.


And she continued to talk up the benefits of using the brand, despite the fact Wholefoods have stopped stocking the products for containing potentially carcinogenic ingredients.


Wholefoods found it contained the preservative sodium benzoate, which can become carcongenic when mixed with vitamin C.


But that is far from the only blow that has been dealt to the drink brand.


Earlier this week it was been accused of using poor quality, non-pure tequila, rather than the ‘100 per cent blue agave tequila’ advertised on the bottle.


The company founder has repeatedly claimed that her ‘margarita you can trust’ had just two ingredients: agave nectar and 100 per cent blue agave tequila.


Skinnygirl drinkers Christopher Rapcinsky and Erin Baker brought a $10 million class action lawsuit against its makers for falsely claiming the drink was ‘all natural’ with ‘no preservatives’.


Rapcinsky and Baker have now amended their suit after discovering the tequila in the drink is ‘a lower quality and purity tequila by-product called mixto - essentially a mash of tequila and some unknown additives’.


Comparing pure tequila to mixto ‘is like comparing Thunderbird wine to a fine Chianti. They're both wine, but very different,’ said their lawyer, Tom Mullaney.


Frankel sold the two-year-old drink line earlier this year for a reported $120million, according to the New York Post.


The lawsuit claims that after liquor giant Beam Global bought the Skinnygirl brand from Frankel, the labels changed to say the drink was made ‘with premium Blue Agave tequila’ – taking out the ‘100 per cent’ reference.


The statement that it includes the premium tequila could therefore be true, the suit said, but is still misleading.


It adds that Skinnygirl's ‘entire marketing campaign, both its advertising and labelling, is based on falsehoods’.


‘Consumers would not have purchased Skinnygirl Margarita had they known it was manufactured with inferior mixto tequila,’ it said.


In a statement, Beam Global argued: ‘Skinnygirl Margarita is made with premium blue agave tequila and meets the highest quality standards. We will defend our case


vigorously, and we are fully confident we will prevail.’Frankel fiercely defended the drink earlier this year when it was revealed it was not as natural as she'd claimed.

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