by Marion Nestle

Search results: POM wonderful

Jan 17 2013

The FTC says no to POM Wonderful’s health claims

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just ruled that POM Wonderful’s claims for the health benefits of its pomegranate juices and products are indeed deceptive.

The FTC also said POM cannot claim that its products do anything special for heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction—unless it produces convincing evidence for these claims through two randomized, controlled clinical trials.

POM

The dispute over POM’s health claims has gone on for more than two years.  The FTC says POM has not proved that drinking its juice will cheat death.

POM says it has spent $35 million on peer-reviewed research proving that the antioxidants in pomegranate products promote health.

Of course they do.  Antioxidants in all fruits and vegetables promote health.

Maybe POM should resort to the defense used by Coca-Cola against charges that Vitamin Water makes deceptive health claims.

As Stephen Colbert reports, Coca-Cola’s argues: “No consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Once again: health claims are about marketing, not health.

Expect POM to take the FTC to court over this ruling.  Stay tuned.

May 23 2012

The FTC vs. POM Wonderful: the latest round

I’ve been following the legal battles between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the makers of POM juice and other pomegranate juice products with avid interest, mainly because they deal with the credibility of sponsored scientific research.

This week, an administrative law judge ruled that POM violated federal law when it deceptively advertised  its products as able to “treat, prevent, or reduce the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction.”

The judge ruled that reasonable consumers would interpret the ads as making such claims but that the company had not produced convincing evidence to support them.

The judge’s decision makes entertaining reading for someone like me who enjoys debates about whether sponsorship of scientific studies influences results and interpretation—as evidence shows they most definitely do.

POM has invested more than $35 million in research to prove that pomegranate juice has health benefits.  It has sponsored about 100 studies at 44 different institutions.  At least 70 of these studies were published in peer-reviewed journals.

It is not difficult to design research studies to give sponsors the answers they want and to make sure they are conducted well.  POM is getting the best research that money can buy.

One such study, of the effects of drinking pomegranate juice on myocardial perfusion (MP, blood flow to the heart), was conducted by Dr. Dean Ornish, who runs a preventive medicine institute in California (the quotes come from pages 268-269 of the decision).

The Ornish MP study was originally designed to last 12 months, with measurements at baseline, 3 months, and 12 months.  [The FTC] charges that the study was cut short when the three-month data came in favorably and Dr. Ornish faced cost overruns.

Dr. [Frank] Sacks [expert witness for the FTC] opined that the shortened study period and failure to report the planned duration are inconsistent with widely accepted standards for conduct of clinical trials and undermine any confidence in the findings.

Dr. Ornish testified that the Ornish MP Study was terminated after three months only because the Resnicks did not provide the funding that they had previously committed to this study….[he said the study]constitutes credible and reliable science showing that pomegranate juice lessens the risk of cardiovascular problems.

The judge found evidence on this study and many others conflicting.  He ruled that this level of disagreement about the quality of the research means that the scientific evidence is not good enough to substantiate the claims.

I was interviewed for a story in Business Week about this decision.

This makes it clear why everyone should be suspicious of the results of sponsored studies…POM-sponsored studies produce results favorable to POM.

POM’s owners have their own spin on the decision.

It says the ALJ’s ruling affirms the scientific validity behind the general health benefits of pomegranates and “completely exonerates” POM regarding its claims in broadcast or print interviews.

Let’s be clear what’s at stake here.  According to the decision document, the owners of POM control 18,000 acres of pomegranate orchards.

From September 2002 through November 2010, sales of POM juice alone totaled nearly $248 million (the supplements and other products add more).

The owners must believe that nobody will buy pomegranate juice and supplements for any reason other than health benefits.

Health claims are about marketing, not health.

Let’s hope the FTC can make the decision stick.

May 23 2011

POM Wonderful vs. the FTC: what this is about

On May 24, an administrative law judge will deal with the matter of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) complaints that health claims made for POM Wonderful pomegranate juice are unsubstantiated by science.

To review:  last September, the FTC complained that the company was advertising its juice with unsubstantiated claims like these:

  • Clinical studies prove that POM Juice and POMx prevent, reduce the risk of, and treat heart disease, including by decreasing arterial plaque, lowering blood pressure, and improving blood flow to the heart;
  • Clinical studies prove that POM Juice and POMx prevent, reduce the risk of, and treat prostate cancer, including by prolonging prostate-specific antigen doubling time;
  • Clinical studies prove that POM Juice prevents, reduces the risk of, and treats, erectile dysfunction.

The FTC argues that these claims are false because POM Wonderful’s studies do not prove what the company claims.  The FTC particularly takes exceptions to the company’s advertisements:

If you want to follow the legalities, the FTC provides a handy summary.

According to FoodNavigator.com, this company must be supporting armies of lawyers:

POM is currently embroiled in a complex web of litigation, having itself launched legal action against the FTC alleging it had exceeded its statutory authority by establishing a two-clinical trial standard to back claims.

It has also filed actions against Coca-Cola Minute Maid, PepsiCo Tropicana and Ocean Spray alleging misleading claims about the contents of their pomegranate-containing juice products.

Separately, POM is itself accused of misleading consumers in a class action lodged in a Florida state court.

Leaving this particular company’s legal strategies aside, at issue is whether food health claims need to be backed up by science.   POM says it has the science.   The FTC says it doesn’t.   I will have more to say about that issue in subsequent posts.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see what happens at the hearing.  Stay tuned.

Sep 28 2010

FTC says no to POM Wonderful advertising claims

The newly alive Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says POM Wonderful must stop making unscientific claims for the health benefits of pomegranate juice.  POM juice, the FTC says, has not been shown to prevent or treat heart disease, prostate cancer, or erectile dysfunction, as the company claims:

  • “SUPER HEALTH POWERS! … 100% PURE POMEGRANATE JUICE. … Backed by $25 million in medical research.  Proven to fight for cardiovascular, prostate and erectile health.”
  • “NEW RESEARCH OFFERS FURTHER PROOF OF THE HEART-HEALTHY BENEFITS OF POM WONDERFUL JUICE.  30% DECREASE IN ARTERIAL PLAQUE … 17% IMPROVED BLOOD FLOW … PROMOTES HEALTHY BLOOD VESSELS … ”
  • “Prostate health…You have to be on pomegranate juice.  You have a 50 percent chance of getting [prostate cancer].  Listen to me.  It is the one thing that will keep your PSA normal.  You have to drink pomegranate juice.  There is nothing else we know of that will keep your PSA in check. … It’s also 40 percent as effective as Viagra.”
  • Clinical studies prove that POM Juice prevents, reduces the risk of, and treats, erectile dysfunction.

The complaint cites advertisements in the Washington Post and Fitness magazine, as well as this ad:

According to the New York Times account, the POM Wonderful folks are not taking this lightly.  They have spent a reported $34 million on research to “prove” that POM has antioxidant activity.

But I could have told them that before they spent a dime!  All fruits and vegetables have antioxidant activity.

I love using POM research as an example of how easy it is to design studies to give you the answer you want.  POM research demonstrates that pomegranate juice has antioxidant activity and acts as an antioxidant in the body.  Of course it does.

But so does every other fruit and vegetable and what this research does not do is compare the effects of pomegranate juice to those of orange juice, for example.     That’s the issue I talked about in my November 19, 2007 post titled “The (silly) battle of the antioxidants.”

Which fruit has the most antioxidants? The latest report says blueberries, followed by cranberries, apples, red grapes, and finally green grapes. What? Pomegranates don’t even make the top five? In this case, who knows? The investigators were testing a new assay method and those were the only fruits they examined.

And then there is the troubling matter of whether antioxidants make a demonstrable difference to health.  The European Food Standards Agency has been turning down health claims for antioxidants like mad.  As I discussed on April 16, 2009:

Here’s another example from the pomegranate folks.  They do brilliant advertising, but this time the British are complaining that these marketers went too far when they posted billboards stating that pomegranate (“antioxidant powerhouse”) juice will help you cheat death.  The British advertising standards agency balked.  Here too, pesky science gets in the way.  Studies not only fail to support a benefit of antioxidants but sometimes show harm.

If only that pesky science weren’t so inconvenient, marketers could do as they please.  The New York Times reports that the POM folks are not taking this lightly.  They are suing the FTC—not because they are claiming they have science on their side, but because they think their health claims, believable or not, are protected by the First Amendment.

Did our founding fathers really introduce the First Amendment to protect the right of marketers to make unsubstantiated health claims?  Do our judges really believe this?  Is this a good case for taking on this question.  Lawyers: get to work!

Nov 18 2019

Industry-funded study of the week: Pomegranates

The study: Matthews LG, Smyser CD, Cherkerzian S, Alexopoulos D, Kenley J, Tuuli MG, et al. (2019) Maternal pomegranate juice intake and brain structure and function in infants with intrauterine growth restriction: A randomized controlled pilot study. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0219596.

The findings (my emphasis): “There were no group differences in brain injury, metrics or volumes. However, treatment subjects displayed reduced diffusivity within the anterior and posterior limbs of the internal capsule compared with placebo. Resting state functional connectivity demonstrated increased correlation and covariance within several networks in treatment subjects, with alterations most apparent in the visual network in per-protocol analyses. Direct effects on health were not found.

Conclusion: In conclusion, maternal pomegranate juice intake in pregnancies with known IUGR was associated with altered white matter organization and functional connectivity in the infant brain, suggesting differences in brain structure and function following in utero pomegranate juice exposure, warranting continued investigation.

Funding: This work was supported by National Institute of Health Grants R01 HD29190 (D. M. Nelson), K02 NS089852 (C.D. Smyser), U54 HD087011 and P30 HD062171 (T.E. Inder), The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital (D. M. Nelson) and an unrestricted gift to Washington University School of Medicine from POM Wonderful, Los Angeles, CA. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Comment: This is a classic example of interpretation bias.  Studies of bias associated with industry funding find that it shows up mostly in the framing of the research question or in the interpretation, as this one demonstrates.  The study did not find anything significant but concluded that drinking pomegranate juice during pregnancy is good for the growing fetus.

Bottom line: Fruit juices (of any kind) are good for health as long as volumes are small.  Eating the fruit itself is better–less sugar, more fiber.

Apr 23 2014

POM v. Coca-Cola at the Supreme Court: The Mind Boggles

You might think that the Supreme Court of the United States would have more important things to do than to weigh in on which of two beverage companies puts less misleading labels on its products, but apparently not.

The highest court in the land takes POM Wonderful’s accusation against Coca-Cola seriously.  Coke’s Minute Maid juice, POM says, is advertised in ways that mislead the public.

POM should know.   It’s been under fire from the Federal Trade Commission for equally absurd label claims.

Here’s the Coca-Cola product at issue.

And here’s what the label says, in case you can’t read it (with emphasis added):

Enhanced Juice/Minute Maid/100% Fruit Juice Blend

Omega-3/DHA/HELP NOURISH YOUR BRAIN

5 Nutrients to Support Brain and Body

Pomegranate  Blueberry Flavored Blend of 5 Juices

From concentrate with added ingredients and other natural flavors

Never mind the nutritional quality or the ridiculous structure/function claims on this particular product (here’s Fooducate’s analysis from 2009—it has 29 grams of sugars, among other things).

POM doesn’t want Coke getting away with selling cheap grape and apple juices as pomengranate juice and undercutting their prices.  Coke’s drink is 99% apple and grape juice; it contains less than 1% pomegranate or blueberry juice.  You would never know that from looking at the label.

Why is the court interested?  The Minute Maid label is legal by FDA standards.  Therefore, can the label be considered misleading?

Coca-Cola won in the lower court, but the Supreme Court seems sympathetic to POM (here’s the transcript of the hearing).

The New York Times account has the best quotes:

Kathleen M. Sullivan, a lawyer for Coca-Cola, said consumers were not misled.

“We don’t think that consumers are quite as unintelligent as Pom must think they are,” she said. “They know when something is a flavored blend of five juices and the nonpredominant juices are just a flavor.”

Justice Kennedy frowned. “Don’t make me feel bad,” he said, “because I thought that this was pomegranate juice.”

It also quotes from Justice Alito:

You don’t think there are a lot of people who buy pomegranate juice because they think it has health benefits, and they would be very surprised to find when they bring home this bottle that’s got a big picture of a pomegranate on it, and it says ‘pomegranate’ on it, that it is — what is it — less than one half of 1 percent pomegranate juice?”

Where is the FDA on all this?  Blame its inaction on the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which allowed ridiculous health claims on food labels and forced the FDA to keep hands off.

This outcome of this case, silly as it is, will be fun to watch.

May 24 2012

POM fights back with out-of-context ads

POM Wonderful has a full-page ad in today’s New York Times (how much do these things cost?) titled “FTC v. POM: You be the judge.”  The ad includes selected quotes from the judge’s decision (see yesterday’s post) and refers readers to its wonderfully named website, pomtruth.com, where you can see the quotes and the ads for yourself.

I couldn’t help doing some checking.

The POM ad quotes from Chief Administrative Law Judge’s decision:

Competent and reliable scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the consumption of pomegranate juice and pomegranate extract supports prostate health, including by prolonging PSA doubling time in men with rising PSA after primary treatment for prostate cancer (page 282).

I turned immediately to page 282.  The sentence before the one quoted would seem to support it:

The basic research, the Pantuck Study, and the Carducci Study, relied on by Respondents [POM Wonderful], support the conclusion that pomegranate juice has a beneficial effect on prostate health.

But what follows the quotation makes it clear that although the research claims to support the effect, it really doesn’t.  Here’s what immediately follows the quotation in the same paragraph:

However, the greater weight of the persuasive expert testimony shows that the evidence relied upon by Respondents is not adequate to substantiate claims that the POM Products treat, prevent, or reduce the risk of prostate cancer or that they are clinically proven to do do so.  Indeed, the authors of the Pantuck Study and the Carducci study each testified that their study did not conclude that POM juice treats, prevents, or reduces the risk of prostate cancer.  And, as Respondents’ expert conceded, no clinical studies, research and/or trials show definitely that the POM Products treat, prevent, or reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

I will just do one more of the quotes.  The ad says:

Competent and reliable scientific evidence shows that pomegranate juice provides a benefit to promoting erectile health and erectile function (page 198).

This is indeed on page 198 but is followed immediately by:

There is insufficient competent and reliable scientific evidence to show that pomegranate juice prevents or reduces the risk of erectile dysfunction or has been clinically proven to do so…There is insufficient competent and reliable scientific evidence to show that pomegranate juice treats erectile dysfunction in a clinical sense or has been clinically proven to do so.

Because these statements are attributed to the same expert witnesses, this must mean that while some studies show benefits, the experts do not believe that these studies (many of them sponsored by POM) are scientifically credible.

Pomegranate juice is a juice.  Fruit juices are healthy and especially delicious when fresh.  I happen to like the taste of pomegranate juice.

But does it have any special health benefits as compared to orange, grapefruit, grape, or any other fruit juice?

Would any fruit juice be likely to prevent heart disease or prostate problems on its own?

Despite POM’s out-of-context advertisement, the Administrative Law Judge did not think so, and neither do I.

Addition: I’m indebted to FoodNavigator.com for noticing some of the other ads.

The caption reads: “Natural Fruit Product with Health Promoting Characteristics–FTC Judge.”

Jun 17 2019

Industry-funded study of the week: this time, Pistachios

Pistachio consumption modulates DNA oxidation and genes related to telomere maintenance: a crossover randomized clinical trial.
Silvia Canudas, Pablo Hernández-Alonso, Serena Galié, Jananee Muralidharan, Lydia Morell-Azanza, Guillermo Zalba, Jesús García-Gavilán,1Amelia Martí, Jordi Salas-Salvadó, and Mònica Bulló.  Am J Clin Nutr 2019;0:1–8.

Conclusions: “Chronic pistachio consumption reduces oxidative damage to DNA and increases the gene expression of some telomere-associated genes. Lessening oxidative damage to DNA and telomerase expression through diet may represent an intriguing way to promote healthspan in humans, reversing certain deleterious metabolic consequences of prediabetes.”

Funding: “The Western Pistachio Association( USA) and Paramount Farms [which grows pistachios and is owned by POM Wonderful] supported the trial… None of the funding sources played a role in the design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data, or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.”

Comment: I love pistachios.  Like other seeds and nuts, pistachios provide healthy fats and other nutrient along with their calories.  POM Wonderful is notorious for spending fortunes on research to prove the health benefits of the nuts and fruits it produces.  These are, of course, high on the recommended-for-health list.  Therefore, as I discuss in Unsavory Truth, such studies are about marketing, not science.