Skooshed: UK yoghurt rapped over multiple misleading claims
The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has invoked new European Union health claim rejections due to come into force on December 14, in a ruling published today against UK yogurt maker, Skoosh.
Skoosh frozen yoghurt was making claims such as: "Helps aid digestion"; "Helps the immune system"; "Helps prevent infections"; "Lowers cholesterol"; "Reduces blood pressure" and "Builds strong bones and teeth".
The ASA said claims such as "Reduces blood pressure", "Helps prevent infections" and "Lowers cholesterol" were disease-risk factor reduction claims and needed to be substantiated as such under article 14 of the EU nutrition and health claims regulation (NHCR).
“We noted that reduction of disease-risk claims were only acceptable under the CAP Code if they had been authorised by the European Commission,” the ASA said.
“In the absence of evidence from Skoosh that these claims were authorised by the European Commission, we concluded that they were in breach of the Code.”
“We considered that the other health claims in the ad would be acceptable if Skoosh could support them with robust evidence. Because they had not provided this evidence, we concluded that the claims were unsubstantiated and therefore in breach of the Code.”
The ASA said the ad was not appear in its current form again.
