False and misleading health-related claims in food supplements on Spanish radio: an analysis from a European Regulatory Framework

OBJECTIVE

The excessive growth of the food supplements' industry highlights the need to focus attention on all aspects involved in their proper consumption; one that takes centre stage is advertising. The aim of this research is to analyse the presence of false and misleading claims in food supplements advertising. To this end, a relationship is established between the different types of health-related claims and the substances on which they are based, whether authorised or not by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

DESIGN

This empirical work conducts a content analysis of all radio mentions broadcast throughout 2017 on news/talk radio stations.

SETTING

Spain.

PARTICIPANTS

All radio mentions broadcast on news/talk commercial radio stations in Spain with the highest audience levels. The corpus is composed of 437 advertisements.

RESULTS

Results indicate that 80·3 % of function claims included in the analysed advertisements are not authorised by EFSA, while 20·4 % of disease claims are not allowed by EU regulation. Likewise, almost half of the substances referred to (43·7 %) are illicit: 54·1 % in function claims, 57·3 % in disease claims and 73·7 % in the case of reduction of disease risk claims.

CONCLUSIONS

This work reveals consistent failures to comply with European regulation on food supplements advertising. The widespread use of unauthorised health claims and substances is aggravated by the indirect recourse of illness as a persuasive argument, descriptions of alleged benefits as product attributes and the omission of essential information. This leads to dangerous misinformation and can pose serious health risks. Stronger legal mechanisms are needed for effective consumer protection.

Marketing of healthcare services in Denmark: the concept of misleading advertising

As severe ill and incurable patients can be easy victims of misleading advertising activities for dangerous and non-effective healthcare treatments, the marketing of healthcare services are in many jurisdictions legislations tightly regulated. This article reviews the Danish regulation on marketing of healthcare services to identify which types of advertising activities that are legal. As the legislation only allows healthcare authorities to control the marketing and not the content and quality of the marketed healthcare services, their ability to intervene in serious cases of misleading advertising is limited. Misleading advertising are statements with the purpose to exaggerate or underestimate the effects and risks of healthcare services or to prevent patients from seeking conventional medical treatments. From a public health perspective, there is a need for a common EU legislation for regulation of the marketing of healthcare services as the increasing use of information technologies makes it possible for the providers to access consumers and patients directly across countries and legal systems.

Internet and Advertisement

The Internet has revolutionized the way knowledge is currently produced, stored and disseminated. A few finger clicks on a keyboard can save time and many hours of search in libraries or shopping in stores. Online trademarks with an (e-) prefix such as e-library, e-business, e-health etc., are increasingly part of our daily professional vocabularies. However, the Internet has also produced multiple negative side effects, ranging from an unhealthy dependency to a dehumanization of human relationships. Fraudulent, unethical and scam practices are also flourishing through for example misleading online advertising methods. Some social and professional networks gather users' profiles for selling and advertising purposes, sometimes by making it technically difficult to unsubscribe. Here, I discuss some of these unethical aspects and propose some potential solutions to reduce them.