BILLIONS of pounds are being wasted every year on "quack" health food products that make false claims about their benefits, an expert on nutrition warned yesterday.
Professor Mike Lean, from Glasgow University, said vulnerable patients were being exploited by the makers of some foods and supplements.
He hoped the new European Union directive on unfair commercial practices, which has been adopted in the UK, w
ould finally help protect consumers.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said food had largely escaped the strict controls involved in bringing a medicine to the market.
He said it was already illegal under food labelling regulations, introduced in 1996, to claim that food products could treat or prevent disease.
"However, huge numbers of such claims are still made, particularly for obesity," Prof Lean said. "Many such claims are not overt or verbal. Using 'implied claims' in brand names, and images on packaging, they are positioned and promoted, by staff or 'testimonials' on vendors' websites, in such a way that consumers are likely to be misled."
He said that, under the new EU rules, products that claimed or implied they would improve health were clearly illegal.
He said misleading marketing was targeted at vulnerable patients; he gave as an example, "diabetic" foods that did not benefit people with diabetes.
But "unscrupulous trading" was most commonly linked to obesity, he said. In the United States alone, this meant some £22 billion was spent on weight loss products in 2000. Prof Lean said hundreds of such products were on shop and supermarket shelves across the UK right now. But there was no evidence to prove they did anything to help people lose weight.
"Nothing justifies the commercial exploitation of vulnerable patients with quack medicines," he said. "The new regulations provide good legislation to protect them from misleading 'health food' claims.
"They now need to be enforced proactively to help direct doctors and consumers towards safe, cost-effective and evidence-based management of diseases."
Dr Joanne Lunn, of the British Nutrition Foundation, said consumers should be able to choose food based on "sound information".
BACKGROUNDSLIMMERS are always on the look-out for the latest and quickest way to lose weight.
Many seek out weight-loss tips from celebrity magazines and the latest fad diets.
But doctors maintain that the most effective way to lose weight is to eat less and take exercise. In more serious cases, some licensed drugs and surgery can be an option.
The public does appear to be listening to this advice. Earlier this year, the analyst Mintel said sales of slimming products had dropped by a third over the past five years to £79 million.
