Schoolgirls celebrities after exposing Ribena
Two Kiwi schoolgirls are worldwide celebrities after their school experiment forced an international pharmaceutical and food giant to admit it made false claims about vitamin C levels in Ribena.
GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest food and drug company in the world, was yesterday fined $217,500 in the Auckland District Court after it admitted 15 breaches of the Fair Trading Act.
The case was brought by the Commerce Commission after a science experiment in 2004 by 14-year-old Pakuranga College schoolgirls Jenny Suo and Anna Devathasan raised questions about the vitamin C content in Ribena….
So begins a March 28, 2007 report in The Press. The report includes a video interview with the girls.
Older, seen-it-all Ribena scholars fondly, if confusedly, recall the puzzlingly-titled editorial “Ribena Tooth Kind,” published in the British Dental Journal, vol. 185, no. 3, 1998, p. 107.
(Thanks to investigator Jenny Bailor for bringing the new research to our attention.)