The ASA ruled that the advert was ‘misleading’ and its claim that the drink was ‘scientifically proven to help support your kids’ defences’ had not been proved.
It’s a major blow for the probiotic drinks industry just weeks after the EU rejected a number of health claims linked to similar products.
The advert showed a bottle of Actimel jumping over a skipping rope while a voiceover stated, ‘Kids love Actimel and it’s good for them too’ against the sound of children cheering in the background. The advert then featured the sound of children cheering and the voiceover added, ‘Actimel. Scientifically proven to help support your kids’ defences’. It ended with the words ‘scientifically proven’ stamped on the screen.
Danone said 23 people in a study group of 6,000 across different age ranges had shown health benefits after drinking Actimel. Eight of these studies were carried out on children up to 16 years old. The company submitted evidence from some of the studies to the ASA, two of which were carried out on hospitalised children in India who were suffering from acute diarrhoea or receiving medication for gastritis-related illnesses. The ASA decided these could not be applied to healthy children.
Two other trials, one in 1999 and one in 2000, examined the effect of Actimel on children aged between 10 and 18 months. The ASA found that the improvement of diarrhoea in the children wasn’t significant enough to support the claims and that the mean age of the children (six months in 1999 and 15.5 months in 2000) was too young to apply to school-age children.
No health benefit was found in relation to asthmatic children and a reduction in the number of children with diarrhoea and allergic rhinitis was too small compared to the control group to prove Actimel was the cause of the improvement, the watchdog said.
It also decided studies using children in day care centres in Russia and America found too small a reduction in common infectious diseases (CIDs) when drinking Actimel than when not. In both studies, children were also taking double the 100g recommended daily serving of the yogurt drink. The ASA concluded that the ad must be banned as it broke rules for being misleading, rules relating to evidence and accuracy in food advertising.
A spokesman for Danone said the company was ”very disappointed” at the ASA’s ruling. He added: ”Our scientific claims are sound and based on a large body of evidence. These studies are designed and approved by a board of internationally recognised experts with extensive, directly relevant experience in human clinical trials, effects of probiotics in the gut, paediatrics and immunology.”
Actimel TV advertising suffered a similar fate nearly three years ago in November 2006, when the ASA banned an Actimel advert from British TV after five people complained it contained misleading health claims.
That advert showed a young girl licking the window of a bus before being pulled away by her mother and is followed by the tagline, ‘Actimel. Help support their natural defences’. The complaints against the ad thought it was misleading and implied that the yogurt drink would protect children from germs in general. The maker of Actimel, Danone, denied that it was misleading, however, stating it was intended to show the brand had benefits for children as well as adults.
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