By Lesley Fair

Breakfast isn’t just about decoder rings or box top prizes anymore.  These days, ads for cereals – and many other products parents buy for their kids – feature grown‑up claims about classroom attentiveness, cognitive function, immunity, and other health-related issues.  Recent actions by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have taken aim against deceptive ad campaigns directed at concerned moms and dads who want the best for their children.  Even if you don’t market in the youth sector, there are important lessons to be learned from the FTC’s efforts.

• All “kid”-ding aside.  Ensuring the accuracy of health claims will always be at the top of the law enforcement agenda, but products that promise healthier or smarter children attract particular attention.  Recent warning letters sent to 11 companies that market various Omega-3 fatty acid supplements for kids demonstrate why it’s critical to back up health claims with sound science.  The FTC cautioned the companies that they need solid evidence to support claims in their ads and on packaging that their products boost kids’ brain development, cognitive function, learning ability, visual acuity, and concentration.
• Play it by the numbers.  When relying on scientific studies, make sure your ads don’t write checks the statistics can’t cash.  The FTC’s settlement with Kellogg illustrates the importance of exercising care when interpreting data.  According to the FTC, Kellogg claimed that a breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal was clinically shown to improve children’s attentiveness by nearly 20 percent.  The FTC alleged that in the study referred to in Kellogg’s advertising, only about half the kids who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast showed any improvement in attentiveness, and only about one in nine improved by 20 percent or more.
• Twice in a lifetime?  Once a company has been successfully sued by the FTC or has settled charges with the agency, new campaigns are bound to attract scrutiny. According to the FTC, around the same time Kellogg agreed to stop making allegedly deceptive claims for Frosted Mini-Wheats, the company began a new campaign promoting the purported health benefits of Rice Krispies.  Kellogg claimed that the cereal “now helps support your child’s immunity” with “25 percent Daily Value of Antioxidants and Nutrients – Vitamins A, B, C, and E.”  The back of the box said that “Kellogg’s Rice Krispies has been improved to include antioxidants and nutrients that your family needs to help them stay healthy.”  A concurring statement by two members of the Commission cast a critical eye at the timing of the campaigns:  “What is particularly disconcerting to us is that at the same time that Kellogg was making promises to the Commission regarding Frosted Mini-Wheats, the company was preparing to make problematic claims about Rice Krispies.”  The FTC’s expanded order against Kellogg prohibits all claims about any health benefit of any food unless they’re backed by competent and reliable scientific evidence.

Find out more about substantiating health claims at business.ftc.gov.

Lesley Fair is an attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.