Product name implies medicinal claims, says UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)

Following a national press ad stating, “Diabetone comprehensive nutritional support for people with diabetes shown to help maintain wellbeing in UK nutritional research”. The ASA reviewed the product claims following a complaint.

In defence of the product Vitabiotics Ltd stated the product was a food supplement as stated on the packaging and not a medicine. Furthermore, they said they had research to support their claims surrounding each nutrient within the product as well as a trial on the whole product.

However, following a review of the data the ASA drew the following conclusions:

• The studies selected to substantiate the claim did not detail methodologies used and did not sufficiently demonstrate that the participants of said trial were healthy (The target audience).

• The data did not substantiate the collective effects of the ingredients within the product.

• Of greater interest is the assessment of the trial funded by the company to substantiate the product as a whole on patients with type 2 diabetes. The assessment concluded that there were not improvements in blood glucose, lipid profiles and that due to poor statistical analysis on the size effects (number of subjects) to produce a statistically significant effect psychological effects could not be proven to be accurate.

The take home message was that the ad could not appear in its current form and that it was likely to mislead the consumer. The real interest here for the food law group is to consider if you have robust data to support your claims and if you are making claims are they being represented in the right way i.e. should this have been registered as a PARNUTS product?

Source: ASA adjudication June 30^th 2010