After his rapid response question dodging as outlined in my previous post, Bio-Synergy’s Daniel Herman has gone strangely silent. In the meantime a comment posted on the blog suggested that the European Food Standards Agency’s findings perhaps did not exactly match Bio-Synergy’s claims about chromium supplements.
So I took a look at this and found that there is insufficient evidence “to establish a cause and effect relationship between the dietary intake of chromium and the contribution to the maintenance or achievement of a normal body weight.”
It seemed to me that a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) was in order so I used their easy to use online complaints form to submit a saved copy of the offending webpage, a link and the following text:
On this page of their website (http://www.bio-synergy.co.uk/bio-synergy-skinny-mousse.html) Bio-Synergy make the following claim for their product Bio-Synergy Skinny Mousse:
“This low calorie dessert is enhanced with chromium which contains naturally occurring amino acids which helps suppress your sugar cravings.”
Quite apart from the fact that chromium is a metallic element and therefore does not contain amino acids, there does not appear to be any reliable evidence that chromium supplements have any effect on sugar cravings or indeed assist with losing weight in any way.
The European Food Standards Agency has this to say about such claims:
“… results from the largest intervention studies on the effects of chromium on body weight were inconsistent, that two studies showed a statistically significant effect of chromium on body weight, that three studies showed no effect and that no evidence of a biologically plausible mechanism by which chromium could exert the claimed effect has been provided.
On the basis of the data presented, the Panel concludes that the evidence provided is insufficient to establish a cause and effect relationship between the dietary intake of chromium and the contribution to the maintenance or
achievement of a normal body weight.”From this: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1732.htm
I’ll blog any response
Tags: Advertising Standards Authority, Bio-Synergy, health claims for food
July 13, 2011 at 9:56 pm |
Ach! An easy win!
July 14, 2011 at 12:36 pm |
Unbelievable.
I expect to see Bio-Synergy appear on the ASA website in the coming months!
December 31, 2011 at 2:23 pm |
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