In functional food advertising, messages are not always easily understandable for the target audience. Current European legislation, enforced through Regulation 1924/2006, specifies that such messages should be clear and precise so as not to mislead the consumer. The objective of this study was to observe consumers’ understanding of messages in functional food advertisements. The methodology used was a self-administered survey filled out by 191 students enrolled in a Degree in Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alicante (Spain). The results suggest that a large number of students do not know what functional food is and obtain information about these products mainly from labelling/packaging. The major means of communication through which they learn about health benefits via advertising is the internet, followed by television. Most respondents indicated that they understood related advertisements and found it helpful to be given additional information on health benefits. Worthy of note, the greater their level of understanding of the messages, the higher their level of distrust of advertising messages, which they considered to be deceptive or misleading.
El objetivo principal de este estudio es el análisis de los componentes que proporcionan buscabilidad y visibilidad a los diarios nativos digitales en Internet, bajo el concepto unificador de la experiencia de búsqueda. La metodología empleada es el análisis comparativo del así llamado Search Experience Optimization (SXO) de un grupo de medios digitales. En concreto, se han analizado eldiario.es, publico.es, elconfidencial.com, elespanol.com, huffingtonpost.es, infolibre.es, libertaddigital.com y vozpopuli.com. Para llevar a cabo este análisis utilizamos el protocolo de estudio denominado PAXBCM. Gracias a este análisis hemos podido mapear e identificar diferentes grados de cumplimiento de la SXO por parte de los cibermedios analizados, siendo libertaddigital.com el que presenta mejores resultados globales. Todos los medios analizados presentan oportunidades de mejora en diversos aspectos, especialmente en la velocidad de carga, el uso de contenido multimedia, la accesibilidad y la buscabilidad.
This study aims at understanding how scientific evidence to substantiate nutrition and health claims in food commercial communication is regulated in Europe and the USA. A literature review was performed on the scientific evidence required by the European Food Safety Authority and the US Food and Drug Administration to substantiate food nutrition and health claims. Studies published in Scopus, Medline, Scirus, and Google Scholar from 2007 to 2012 were reviewed as well as documents released by both agencies. A total of 38 documents met our inclusion criteria out of 743 documents initially identified during our search. These agencies provide general guidelines on how to conduct food and health studies, intended to demonstrate a cause‐and‐effect relationship between a given food and a benefit to health. Despite this, they need to broaden the depth and scope of the guidelines provided to companies seeking to substantiate their claims and to provide further and more precise information concerning the evaluation of studies and application processes. No review has hitherto specifically focused on the subject of scientific evidence required by EU and US food agencies to substantiate health claims. This research thus leads to significant recommendations on how to improve current food industry guides.
Objective:
To analyse the information on health claims present in the labelling of creatine monohydrate (CM) products.
Design:
A descriptive study of a selection of products marketed as CM, with health claims, and that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria, was conducted using the Amazon and Google Shopping websites. The adequacy and compliance of the health claims were evaluated with the European legislative requirements (European Food Safety Authority and European Commission). The results were discussed with scientific evidence criteria from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, International Olympic Committee, and International Society of Sports Nutrition, as well as the systematic review carried out by Mielgo-Ayuso in 2019.
Setting:
Health claims in the commercial communications of a sample of CM supplements, in relation to current legislation and scientific knowledge.
Participant:
A total of 554 CM products were obtained.
Results:
Of the total sample, only 167 met the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Of these, 30·5 % recommended a CM dose of 5·0–5·9 g/d, while 29·9 % recommended 3·0 to 3·9 g/d. As for the health claims, ‘Enhances physical performance’ appeared in 73·1 % of the supplements, in most cases referring to a dosage of 3·0 to 3·9 g/d for these products. The rest of the declarations were not adequate or needed to be modified.
Conclusion:
Only 25 % of the health claims complied with the criteria established by the scientific reference documents. Most of the declarations must be modified or eliminated, as they could be considered fraudulent and/or misleading for the consumer.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.