Ad description
A TV ad for Diet Chef ‒ a service which delivered calorie-controlled meals to customers' homes ‒ featured a woman who said "... I'm on a calorie controlled diet at the moment, but I'm not counting - Diet Chef do all the numbers for me ... With Diet Chef, the portions are all worked out for you." She was shown about to eat meals at various times of the day, one of which was a chicken curry with rice and salad. On-screen text shown at the beginning of the ad stated "Serving suggestion shown throughout."
Issue
A complainant, who found that rice, vegetables and other extras were not included with the meals and that calories for them had to be calculated and added separately, challenged whether the claims "I'm not counting - Diet Chef do all the numbers for me" and "With Diet Chef, the portions are all worked out for you" were misleading.
Response
Diet Chef said that, to account for customer preferences and to provide flexibility, some meals contained more carbohydrate than others. They said pasta carbonara came with pasta; cottage pie was topped with mash and paella was very rich in rice. chicken curry did not come with rice, but they said some customers chose to eat it without adding anything; some added a portion of bread and some added a portion of rice. They said full details of what was included with each meal were available during the purchase process and that, if a customer did not want to add carbohydrates, they could choose to receive meals that were already carbohydrate-rich.
Diet Chef said the meals were designed to be complete at a macronutrient level and that all calories were counted in the food they supplied, but that the current weight and level of activity of each customer would be different. They suggested that customers use Diet Chef's online BMI tool to determine how many additional calories they might need to add in order for them to remain within the recommended safe level of weight loss of 1‒2 lbs a week and so that they observed the government ‘5-a-day’ and dairy recommendations. Diet Chef said where a customer needed to add more calories, they provided full portion advice and visual cues so that the customer would not need to work out calories or portion sizes. Diet Chef supplied a copy of that advice. In that sense, they considered calories did not need to be calculated.
Clearcast endorsed Diet Chef's response and added that on-screen text stated "Serving suggestions shown throughout."
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted Diet Chef's point that menu plans needed to be tailored according to the weight and level of activity of the individual. However, we considered the claims nevertheless emphasised the convenience of a diet system in which the calorie content of meals had already been calculated for the dieter and suggested that additional calculations did not need to be made. We considered that was likely to have particular appeal for people who were concerned that, by putting their own menu plans together and calculating calories, they might over-eat and fail to lose weight. We considered the advice Diet Chef supplied to customers for counting the calories of additional items had been put together in a way that was easy to use but that, nevertheless, in practice, it was likely that additional items would need to be added to the meals that were supplied and their separate calorie values added. Because of that, we concluded that the claims were misleading and in breach of the Code.
The claims breached BCAP Code rules
3.1
3.1
Advertisements must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
and
3.2
3.2
Advertisements must not mislead consumers by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that consumers need in context to make informed decisions about whether or how to buy a product or service. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead consumers depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the advertisement is constrained by time or space, the measures that the advertiser takes to make that information available to consumers by other means.
(Misleading advertising) and
3.10
3.10
Advertisements must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.
(Qualification).
Action
The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form.
