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All Containers›Shop by use case›Beverages›Selling it›Health claims, and the ones to avoidShop all non alcoholic →
Selling it

Health claims, and the ones to avoid

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

No category in this estate is under more pressure to make health claims, and few have less ability to support them.

The category invites them

Kombucha, cold-pressed juice, shots, functional drinks: the entire modern beverage market is positioned on benefit, and the customer arrives expecting one.

Which makes the temptation constant rather than occasional, and it arrives through the product page and the social post rather than the label.

Three kinds of claim

Nutrient content claims: "good source of vitamin C", "low sugar", which have defined criteria you either meet or do not.

Structure or function claims: "supports digestion", "supports immunity", which describe an effect on the body and come with their own requirements and expectations.

Disease claims: anything saying the product treats, prevents or cures a condition, which take the product out of food entirely and into drug territory.

The third is the bright line and the easiest to cross casually, because "helps with" a named condition is a normal sentence.

What a probiotic claim needs

The specific case for a live-cultured drink, and the one makers most often get wrong.

A probiotic claim is a claim about specific organisms at a specific level delivering a specific effect.

Which means naming the organisms, knowing the count at the end of shelf life rather than at filling, and having a basis for the effect.

A wild mixed culture whose composition you have not characterized and whose count you have not measured does not support a probiotic claim, however alive it is.

"Contains live cultures" is a factual statement about the product. "Probiotic" is a claim about what they do.

What to say instead

What is in it, factually: the ingredients, the base, the fact that it is unpasteurized, the fact that it contains live cultures.

How it is made and where the material came from.

How it tastes.

All of which are true, checkable, and a better differentiator for a small maker than a benefit claim the customer has heard from twenty other brands.

References

US Food and Drug Administration. Food Labeling Guide, including the nutrition labeling and serving size rules that apply to beverages. fda.gov
US Food and Drug Administration. Food Facility Registration and the preventive controls requirements for human food. fda.gov
Written from the federal regulation and agency guidance named on each page, not from a laboratory. Whether a particular product meets a pathogen reduction requirement, and what its alcohol content actually is, are measurements about your product, and this is not those measurements.