Regulator rules sponsored video promoted low-calorie diet without advising users to seek medical advice
A post on Katie Price’s Instagram account has been banned by the UK’s advertising regulator for irresponsibly promoting a low-calorie diet, failing to disclose it was an advert, and making unauthorized weight loss claims.
The Instagram reel, shared on the model’s account in August 2023, shows her preparing meals throughout the day and discussing her weight loss efforts while repeatedly endorsing the Skinny Food Co line of low-calorie meals.
The final shot indicates that the total calories depicted in all the day’s meals were just 755, slightly more than a third of the recommended amount for an adult woman. According to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), diets below 800 calories a day must advise users to seek medical advice and be promoted for short-term use only.
Only one reference indicated that the post was a paid advert: a lone “#ad” hashtag in the written description accompanying the post, which was truncated from view unless the user actively tapped to read the entire caption. Another complaint—regarding health claims, including weight loss claims, needing to be registered with a regulator—was also upheld.
The ASA stated, “We acknowledged that the reel featured the hashtag ‘#ad’ in the caption. However, the identifier was placed at the end of the caption and was not visible without engaging with the post and expanding the text. We therefore concluded that the label was insufficiently prominent to obviously identify the ad as a marketing communication from the outset.”
The regulator also added, “There was no explicit instruction that the diet must only be followed on a short-term basis, and no reference, either within the video or the caption, to the need to take medical advice before embarking on this diet. We therefore considered that consumers would understand from the ad that they could elect to follow a similar diet that fell below 800 kcal a day by consuming the same products, and other products from The Skinny Food Co’s range, without taking medical advice, until they achieved their desired weight.”
The ASA stated that Price had agreed to remove the advertisement, acknowledged that she followed a calorie deficit approach, which she believed was common among many people in the UK, and requested additional information on how to ensure similar posts comply with regulations in the future.