- Consumer damage stemmed from health food products continue to rise -

Some of advertisements for general foods claiming to be healthy and functional were found to be false and misleading ones and argue their effectiveness in treating and preventing a disease.  

The Korea Consumer Agency (President: Young-seen Kim, www.kca.go.kr) recently conducted an analysis on advertisement of health food products posted on online shopping malls and newspapers and found the following:

* General food claiming to be functional means food, not a health functional food, claiming its effectiveness improving health such as agro-products, general processed food, and livestock processed food. 

Meanwhile, among ads for ‘health functional foods’, only 5 (1.6%) were found to be false or misleading. The low percentage is believed to be attributed to a preliminary review for labeling and advertisement under the Law for Health Functional Foods. However, a preliminary review is not an obligation for ads for general foods except foods with a special purpose (such as food for infants and pregnant women) under the Food Sanitation Law.

Also, it was pointed out that labeling and advertisement for general food under the existing law allows a comprehensive and vague expression such as health promotion, improvement of a physical constitution, and dietary therapy. 

The false and misleading advertisement can be a cause for side effect after consuming those products. In reality, the Consumer Injury Surveillance System (CISS) of the KCA continues to witness a massive surge in consumer damage related to health products every year.

※ No. of consumer damage cases reported to the CISS (related health products) continues to rise from 298, 368, and 543 cases in 2009, 2010, and 2011. 

Based on the results, the KCA pointed out that 1) labeling and advertisement needs to improve its scope in reference to general foods’ effectiveness for health; 2) guideline should be applied more rigorously for labeling effectiveness for health for general foods; 3) a fundamental system improvement needs to be made such as toughening punishment against false and misleading ad promoters. Also, the Agency asked relevant Ministries to enhance monitoring systems for false and misleading advertisement of health products.