FTC Gets Tough with Kellogg over Immunity Claims; Company Agrees to New Restrictions
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week announced that Kellogg Co. has agreed to resolve an “investigation into questionable immunity-related claims for Rice Krispies cereal.”
The agreement reopens a prior order involving Kellogg’s® Frosted Mini-Wheats®; the FTC will now require “substantiation for all health claims for any food” based on “competent and reliable scientific evidence,” defined as “tests, analyses, research, or studies that have been conducted and evaluated in an objective manner by qualified persons and are generally accepted in the profession to yield accurate and reliable results.”
According to the concurring statement of Commissioner Julie Brill and FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz, the company was “developing its questionable Rice Krispies campaign last year [while] it was simultaneously negotiating with the FTC to resolve earlier allegations that the company had deceptively marketed Frosted Mini-Wheats as improving children’s attentiveness.”
The concurring statement also notes, “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 statement concludes, “We hope that the Commission action announced today communicates to industry that it has an obligation to be honest with the public, and that the FTC will act swiftly to challenge questionable health claims about children’s food products. Our kids and parents deserve no less.”
The company apparently claimed that Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal was “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20%,” and then marketed its Rice Krispies cereal as a product that “now helps support your child’s immunity.” Under the 2009 settlement order, the company was prohibited “from making claims about the benefits to cognitive health, process, or function provided by any cereal or any morning food or snack food unless the claims were true and substantiated.” Now any product-related claims involving health benefits must be backed by scientific evidence and not be misleading. See FTC Press Release, June 3, 2010.
