Ad description
A website for Racing Greens, www.racinggreens.co.uk, a nutritional and fitness product retailer, seen on 28 February 2018, promoted their “Racing Greens Green Drink”. Text on the page headed “WHAT WE DO” stated “… Racing Greens provides six servings of the five a day recommended by the World Health Organisation”. The product page featured an image of the product with text which stated “RACING GREENS 6 OF YOUR 5 A DAY”. The same text appeared on the product label.
Issue
The complainant, challenged whether the claim that the product provided “6 of your 5 a day”, was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Racing Greens Nutraceuticals Ltd, t/a Racing Greens said that they could substantiate the claim that the product had enough ingredients to contain the equivalent of six of a person’s five a day.
They said the product was a blend of over 28 varieties of fruits and vegetables, one of which was Fruit & Greens powder. They said the manufacturer of Fruit & Greens described it as being “freshly-extracted fruits and vegetables specially concentrated obtained from a proprietary process” and that it was not a blend. Racing Greens further explained the process by which the fruits and vegetables were blended. They said the process was called low heat dehydration; this was a dry heat which took all of the moisture out of the fruits and vegetables allowing the retention of their enzyme content, which extended the products shelf life in that dormant state. The product was then shredded and ground into a fine powder which increased its volume, because the water and air had been extracted. They said that the whole fruit and the whole vegetable made up the blend including the fibre and that it was not a juice blend or a smoothie.
Racing Greens said that 5 g of Fruit & Greens was the equivalent of 500 g of fruit and vegetables, and that their product contained 8.5% of Fruit & Greens in each tub which they said equalled 1100 g in each tub. They said that the content of a tub was 270 g which contained 30 servings at 36 g per serving.
Racing Greens provided a Technical Data Sheet listing the ingredients of the Fruits & Green extract, which were various fruits and vegetables. The data sheet also listed the appearance, odour and taste of the product. They also provided a Declaration Country of Origin certificate which stated that the raw material used in the product was manufactured in the USA, together with a manufacturing flow chart.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that consumers were likely to understand the claim, “6 OF YOUR FIVE A DAY” to mean that the product provided one more than the five portions of fruit and vegetables that government guidelines recommended consumers were to consume a day.
We referred to government guidance which explained that a portion was defined as approximately an 80 g serving of fruit or vegetables, which could be fresh, frozen, canned or juiced. A portion of dried fruit was approximately a 30 g serving (fresh weight equivalent) and five portions equated to 400 g of a variety of fruit and vegetables each day. We also understood that 150 ml of unsweetened fruit juice, vegetable juice or a smoothie could only count as a maximum of one portion of a five a day. We therefore considered that only products which met those criteria could claim to be, or be equivalent to, one or more portions of fruit and vegetables.
We noted that Racing Greens said that there were over 28 different types of fruit and vegetables in the product. However, because we understood that the product was a powder, which had to be mixed with water, or fruit juice to be consumed, we considered that the drink could not be considered to contain fruit and vegetables as defined by the government guidance and therefore could not count towards portions of ‘five a day’.
Public Health England said that as at 12 June 2018, their advice was that fruit and vegetable powders did not count towards the ‘5 A Day’ recommendation, because they were considered to be too far removed from the original product and that as of 12 June, there was insufficient evidence that fruit and vegetable powders provided equivalent health benefits to consuming the original fruit or vegetable (fresh, frozen, tinned, dried or juiced).
Because the product did not contain fruit and vegetables as required by the guidance, we concluded that the claim “6 of your five a day” was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
3.1
3.1
Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
3.3
3.3
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer 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 the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
(Misleading advertising),
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation) and
3.11
3.11
Marketing communications must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product.
(Exaggeration).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Racing Greens Nutraceuticals Ltd not to claim or imply that the product was the equivalent of fruit and vegetables and could count towards the recommended ‘five a day’ portions of fruit and vegetables.
