Functional Food claims in the spotlight again
17 August 2006
June saw the publication of two significant adjudications by the ASA on complaints against ads for functional foods, one for St Ivel advance milk, the other for Flora pro.activ margarine. The ASA is scrupulous in its assessment of the evidence used to support scientific claims and will accept nothing but the most rigorous and conclusive proof. In both of those adjudications, the ASA found the evidence produced wanting despite both advertisers producing a wealth of scientific evidence.
Dairy Crest’s press ad claims for St Ivel advance milk related to the Omega 3 fatty acids added to the milk, in the advertiser’s words “to give your kids more Omega 3, without them noticing”. Omega 3, said Dairy Crest, could “enhance a child’s concentration and ability,” according to experts in child development. Professor Lord Robert Winston appeared in the ad to give credence to the claims (a TV ad in the campaign was not investigated, because it made no specific claims for Omega 3).
When challenged over those claims, Dairy Crest produced several studies – among them the well-known “Oxford-Durham study” – to support its contentions. But the ASA judged that the studies had been carried out on children with “Developmental Coordination Disorder” and, therefore, the study’s results could not be extrapolated to all children. Furthermore, the other trials produced to support the ad’s claims used Omega 3 compounds of significantly different concentrations from the St Ivel advance formula. On that basis the ASA concluded that the claims in the ad had not been substantiated.
Meanwhile, the ASA was looking at Unilever’s claims for Flora’s pro.activ margarine. Back in 2004, Unilever had developed a new formulation of its spread, claiming that the addition of folic acid and B vitamins to the plant sterol-based product made it even better at helping to lower cholesterol and “keep blood vessels healthy” as part of a healthy lifestyle.
The ASA accepted Unilever’s arguments that plant sterols were established as helping to lower cholesterol and that other ingredients were known to contribute to the maintenance of normal blood homocysteine levels. Unilever argued that those two factors resulted in improved blood vessel health. The ASA believed that that assumption was not sound and was concerned about the lack of direct evidence that pro.activ margarine had an effect on key indicators of blood vessel health, such as reactivity or wall thickness. And expert advisers informed the ASA that no direct causal link had been established between homocysteine levels and the reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
Interestingly, the ASA saw strong evidence from Unilever that folic acid and B vitamins had generally positive effects on blood vessel reactivity but not in the concentrations used in the pro.activ spread. The ASA concluded that the claim that pro.activ keeps blood vessels healthy was misleading.
So, once again, the ASA has upheld complaints against functional food health claims on the grounds that the evidence produced did not relate specifically to the food in question. And the ASA has once again underlined its conclusions that just because your food contains certain ingredients that does not mean that you may necessarily claim benefits associated with those ingredients.
Adjudications upholding complaints about functional foods are building up in the ASA’s archives. And, with the focus firmly on food advertising at the moment, it is doubly important for food advertisers to be absolutely certain that they can back any functional health claims for their food products with rigorous product-specific evidence.