The ASA has banned Whitworths' 'Eat nuts. Live longer' billboards as shared on Instagram, ruling that a promise to live longer is an unauthorised health claim and implies disease prevention.
Whitworths has had its “Eat nuts. Live longer” adverts banned. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled on Wednesday that an Instagram post from the dried fruit and nut brand, showing five of its billboards with lines including “Eat pecans. Live longer”, made health and disease-prevention claims that are not allowed for food.
The carousel, posted on the brand’s WhitworthsUK account in May, paired the “Live longer” slogans with small print pointing to studies that link eating nuts with lower cholesterol and a lower risk of heart disease. Whitworths told the ASA the lines described an association, not a guarantee, that the science behind it is sound, and that its supporting copy said “large international studies suggest” rather than promising anything, according to the ruling.
The ASA accepted there is evidence about nuts and heart health. The problem is that food advertising in the UK can only use health claims that appear on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register, in wording that matches them, and there is no authorised claim that nuts help you live longer. Telling people a food will extend their life also implies it prevents disease, which food adverts cannot do at all, however carefully the small print is worded. The ads broke CAP Code rules 15.1, 15.1.1, 15.6 and 15.6.2.
This is a good line killed by a rule most copywriters meet only once. “Eat nuts. Live longer” is the kind of short, confident promise every brief asks for, and it is exactly the kind of promise food law was written to stop, because a claim about living longer is a claim about disease. The small print did not save it, and it rarely does, because the ASA judges the impression the headline gives, not the caveat underneath.
There is an irony in the timing. The same batch of rulings caught The Trade Desk, Morley’s and San Carlo for advertising food the rules treat as too unhealthy to promote online, while Whitworths was caught for claiming its product was too good for you. For the full picture on what food brands can and cannot claim, see our guide to UK advertising rules, and for more ads that fell foul of the regulator, the most famous banned adverts.
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