Weight loss foods spending slammed

Obese people around the world waste billions of pounds a year on food products that imply they aid weight loss, but are totally ineffective, it has been claimed.

Professor Mike Lean, a nutritional expert from the University of Glasgow, says new regulations designed to protect consumers should be "enforced proactively" to help direct them towards evidence based management of diseases, including obesity.

In an editorial published on bmj.com he says the EU Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices, enforced in the UK in May, was designed to plug gaps in existing consumer protection legislation and to protect vulnerable people who are often the target of unscrupulous traders, and obliges businesses not to mislead consumers.

"The distinction between medicines and foods is sometimes unclear when they are marketed for health reasons, and consumers can be misled," he writes.

"Medicines are licensed in Europe only after stringent experimental research to establish safety and efficacy. In the UK, this process is regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Food products marketed for health have largely escaped these controls.

"The Joint Health Claims Initiative, which was set up in the UK to establish a code of practice for health claims on food, established a process for their evaluation on the basis that similar systematic evidence bases should be required to those for drugs.

"The EU regulation on nutrition and health claims for foods was adopted in 2006. All claims - such as "low fat", "high fibre", or "helps lower cholesterol" - are required to be clear, accurate, and substantiated, so that only products offering genuine health or nutritional benefits could refer to these claims on their labels."

Professor Lean says it is already illegal under food labelling regulations (1996) to claim that food products can treat or prevent disease.

"However, huge numbers of such claims are still made, particularly for obesity. Many such claims are not overt or verbal. Using 'implied claims' in brand names, and images on packaging, they are positioned and promoted, by staff or 'testimonials' on vendors' websites, in such a way that consumers are likely to be misled.

"Under the new regulations, products or services that falsely (without substantiation) claim or imply that they can improve health are now clearly illegal."

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