If someone offered you a magic dust that would transform you into actor, mother, and lifestyle advice entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, would you take it? If that doesn’t interest you, what about a powder that claims to be “designed to maintain healthy systems for superior cognitive flow, clarity, memory, creativity, alertness, and the capacity to handle stress”?
Self-regulation bodies for advertisers and for the dietary supplement industry have asked the company Moon Juice and prominent fan Paltrow to cool it with the claims for the company’s powders. Sorry, “dusts.”
The National Ad Division, an industry self-regulation unit administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, investigated this claim along with an industry group from the nutritional supplement business, the Council for Responsible Nutrition.
While usually ad claims inquiries like this begin because of a complaint from a competitor, in this case the two groups say review came as part of a general look at claims that supplement companies and their affiliates make about the health effects of supplements. If they advertise any specific health claims, that would make them drugs, and have to be regulated as such.
Paltrow recently published her daily smoothie regimen on her lifestyle site, Goop, noting that she carefully chooses a Moon Dust brand powder according to her plans for the day, and the article suggests doing the same.
“Choose your Moon Juice moon dust depending on what the day ahead holds … brain dust before a long day at the office, sex dust before a date, etc,” it says.
That’s a little specific for the ad watchdogs, and both asked that Moon Juice stop making these claims, and that Goop, as a third-party marketer of the products, also stop making the claims. Specifically for Moon Juice and its colorful dust jars, the NAD asked the company to either prove or remove claims printed on the jar like “Medicinal Grade,” “Bioactive Power Potion,” and “All Organic or Wild.”
It just happens that now is when Moon Juice is starting to sell its products in the beauty departments of major department stores, in the nebulous space between nutritional supplements and beauty products.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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