The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Huel advert featuring its founder.
- This marks the second time in two months that Huel has faced ASA action.
- The advert was posted on Huel’s Instagram, promoting their Daily Greens product.
- Claims within the advert were deemed non-compliant with advertising codes.
- Concerns were raised over unsupported claims regarding nutritional content and cost.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has once again taken action against a Huel advertisement, this time disallowing a promotion featuring the company’s founder, Julian Hearn. The advert was prominently displayed on Huel’s Instagram platform and centred around their Daily Greens product. Hearn’s statement suggesting the product could provide greens more effectively, or at a lesser cost than traditional vegetables, was scrutinised. Specifically, he claimed: “You’ve been told your whole life to eat greens, and a lot of people can’t get that amount of greens into their diet […] we’ve taken a very broad range of greens, so you get a product which is equally good, or in my eyes better, but you get it substantially cheaper.”
The ASA identified that the assertion made regarding Huel Daily Green’s equivalence, or superiority, to green vegetables in nutritional content did not meet the criteria for a ‘permitted comparative nutrient claim’. This missing compliance triggered the ban. The claim that the product was ‘substantially cheaper’ than a daily intake of fresh greens was another point of contention due to the absence of verifiable evidence.
In addition to the primary claims, other health-related assertions lacked substantive proof. These included claims related to iron content, biotin 2, and various phrases like ‘superfoods to supercharge your health’, ‘gut-friendly probiotics’, and ‘all the nutrients your body needs to thrive’, which were viewed as misleading without proper validation.
This is not an isolated incident for Huel; in the previous month, a similar ruling was made concerning another advert. That particular Facebook advert was critiqued for omitting crucial detail about one of its endorsers, Steven Bartlett, being a director at Huel, a fact the ASA deemed necessary for full transparency.
The repetitive nature of these advertising breaches by Huel highlights a significant oversight in aligning promotional content with regulatory standards.
