A Chicago-area Dunkin' customer has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming the chain's Dunkin' Zero energy drinks aren't nearly as sugar-free as their name suggests. The complaint, filed by Illinois resident Phyllis C. Wells, alleges the lightly carbonated beverages contain significant amounts of a sweetener called allulose — a substance she says still counts as sugar under federal labeling rules, even though Dunkin' marketed the drinks as zero sugar.
Wells filed her complaint on September 30 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, naming both Canton-based Dunkin' Brands, Inc. and its parent company, Inspire Brands, as defendants, according to Universal Hub. The venue reflects Dunkin's corporate home base in Massachusetts, even though Wells lives in Illinois and shopped at a drive-through location on South Halsted Street in Chicago, per the same outlet's review of the filing. The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of consumers nationwide who bought Dunkin' Zero drinks since the line launched, with an Illinois-specific subclass also proposed, and it requests financial damages, restitution, attorneys' fees, and a court order forcing Dunkin' to stop its zero-sugar marketing or add corrective disclosures, as reported by Boston 25 News.
What's Allegedly Inside the Cup
According to the complaint, Dunkin' Zero medium drinks contain roughly 9 grams of allulose, while large sizes carry about 11 to 13 grams, with the flavored syrups listing allulose as a primary ingredient before being mixed with sparkling water. Federal regulations only permit zero-sugar claims for products containing less than 0.5 grams of sugar per serving, per the complaint as described by Boston 25 News. Wells says she bought Dunkin' Zero drinks two to three times a week specifically to limit her sugar intake, relying on the company's zero-sugar labeling, and that she would have either skipped the purchases or paid less had she known the drinks contained allulose.
Dunkin' rolled out the Zero line nationwide on March 4, marketing the 20-calorie, B-vitamin-infused drinks as a zero-gram-sugar afternoon pick-me-up, according to a company announcement from Dunkin'. The drinks pack about 145 milligrams of caffeine per serving and debuted in six fruit-forward flavors, including Blackberry Tangerine, Tropical Mango, and Juicy Peach, per product details from Sporked. Boston 25 News reports it reached out to Dunkin' for comment on the allegations.
A Regulatory Gray Area Fueling a Wave of Lawsuits
The Dunkin' suit lands amid a much larger legal reckoning over allulose. On July 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled in Franco v. Chobani, LLC that allulose legally qualifies as a sugar under federal regulations, reinstating a deceptive-marketing class action over Zero Sugar yogurt, according to Holland & Knight. In the weeks that followed, nearly 60 class-action lawsuits were filed against food and beverage producers over zero sugar or sugar-free marketing on products containing allulose, the ABA Journal reports.
At the heart of the dispute is a regulatory gap. The FDA submitted an amicus brief during the Franco appeal confirming that allulose is a monosaccharide falling within the regulatory definition of total sugars under 21 C.F.R. § 101.9(c)(6)(ii), according to Reed Smith. Yet back in October 2020, the FDA had issued non-binding guidance saying it would exercise enforcement discretion allowing manufacturers to leave allulose off Total Sugars declarations on Nutrition Facts panels — without ever formally amending the separate regulations governing front-of-package zero sugar claims under 21 C.F.R. § 101.60(c)(1), notes Morrison Foerster. Plaintiffs' attorneys across these cases are leaning on that gap, arguing that whatever leeway the back-of-package nutrition label gets, front-of-package sugar-free claims are still bound by stricter rules.
Allulose itself is a naturally occurring rare sugar with roughly 70 percent of the sweetness of table sugar, yielding just 0.4 calories per gram because the body metabolizes it without causing significant blood sugar spikes, according to Global Resources Direct. That metabolic quirk is exactly why beverage makers like Dunkin' have embraced it as a sweetener — and exactly why plaintiffs argue it still belongs on the sugar side of the ledger, regardless of how it's marketed on the cup.
