ASA bans ad for misleading claims about ultra-processed ingredients
UK
May 22, 2025
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Facebook ad by nutrition startup Zoe after it found the brand’s claim that its Daily30+ supplement was free from ultra-processed (UPF) ingredients was likely to “mislead” consumers.
The ad, posted in September 2024, promoted the “wholefood supplement” with an endorsement from entrepreneur Steven Bartlett that read: “This is a supplement revolution. No ultra-processed pills, no shakes, just real food.”
While the ASA acknowledges the product doesn’t fall within the NOVA classification system – the legal framework for classifying food processing – for UPFs, it decided consumers would not be “aware” of the system.
The ASA understood that while studies into consumer awareness of UPFs were limited in the UK, a scoping review of evidence report from the Advisory Committee for Social Science, an independent expert committee of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), found that many consumers did not understand the specific nature of UPFs. We considered the review showed consumers’ understanding of UPFs was not fully aligned with the NOVA classification, and that they would not be able to accurately categorise foods using the system. Instead, consumers were likely to understand in general terms that UPFs were ‘unhealthy’, and that non-UPFs were ‘healthy’. The use of the term “UPFs” could therefore act as a deterrent to consuming products that were believed to contain them.
Finally, ASA believes that the claim "This is a revolution in supplements. No ultra-processed pills, no shakes, just real food" implied that the product did not contain any ingredients that consumers would interpret as ultra-processed, when it was not, and, therefore, could be misleading.
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