The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a ruling against food supplement retailer Zoe for containing ultra-processed ingredients.

The paid for Facebook ad for the brand, seen on 19 September 2024, stated, “Daily30+ is a plant-based wholefood supplement…[poo emoji] Contains chicory inulin”.

Additional copy read: “This is a supplement revolution. No ultra processed pills, no shakes, just real food. Steven Barlett [sic]”.

A professor in nutrition and food science challenged whether the ad was misleading, as it claimed it contained no ultra-processed products.

The regulator reached out to Zoe, who said it aimed to support consumers in understanding Ultra Processed Foods (UPF’s) and improve their health. It added that it did not claim its Daily 30+ product was not ultra processed.

The firm clarified that its ad had been crafted to explain to consumers that the product was not an “ultra processed pill” as it did not contain added preservatives, sweeteners or flavour enhancers.

Zoe referred to the Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee report “Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system” for its definition of what a UPF food was; a product that contained unhealthy levels of fats, refined sugar and salt.

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However, the complainant mentioned a blog post on the company’s website which suggested a product could be considered as ultra processed if it was manufactured using industrial scale production methods.

The company responded, stating its post had been taken out of context.

According to the regulator, it understood there was no universally accepted definition of UPF’s. The term had been introduced as part of the NOVA classification system and a report from the Advisory Committee for Social Science found many consumers did not understand UPF’s.

Instead, the ASA explained, many consumers would consider UPF’s unhealthy and non-UPF’s as healthy.

It said: “We considered consumers would understand the claim ‘Daily 30+ is a […] wholefood supplement to mean the product comprised solely of wholefood ingredients. They would understand whole foods to be those foods that were either unprocessed or had undergone minimal levels of processing.

“Consequently, consumers would expect that the ingredients used in the product were all very close to their unprocessed form, and therefore those ingredients and the product as a whole were not UPFs.”

Therefore, the body ruled that the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading Advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).