Trust alone

“Claims about nutrition interventions are inconsistently policed”

International standards and laws about health and content claims for nutrition interventions exist, but are inconsistently implemented and monitored across countries.

Inconsistent standards and laws leave room for producing, advertising, marketing and selling of nutrition products with misleading health and content claims.

For example, a misleading claim about ‘co-enzyme q10 for weight loss’, or a misleading claim about a nutrition supplement containing a certain active ingredient, which may not be the case, is more likely to occur in countries where health and content claims about nutrition are not implemented or poorly policed.

This can have bad consequences. For example, elite sportsmen taking a nutritional supplement may unknowingly also take a banned substance present in the supplement and not declared on the label.

BEWARE: Claims on labels of nutrition products are not always true, as these are often poorly policed.

REMEMBER: Do not rely on health and content claims about nutrition interventions that are not based on systematic reviews of fair comparisons of interventions, especially in countries where these are poorly policed.