The chaos of health food marketing in the live broadcast room should be "reduced fever"

Nowadays, there are many live broadcasts that exaggerate and deify the efficacy of ordinary products that make the audience mistakenly think that it is health food, and some anchors directly bring health foods, such as multivitamin tablets, fish oil capsules, calcium tablets, etc.
, and imply that the audience has therapeutic effects
during the introduction.

Many online anchors blow some ordinary foods or health foods to the sky, claiming that they have many "functions" or "curative effects" that are beneficial to health, disease prevention and treatment, such as "detoxifying and beauty", "preventing alopecia areata", "improving immunity", or "removing Helicobacter pylori", "delaying aging" and "preventing cancer"
.

There are strict laws and regulations on the advertising and marketing of food and health foods
.
The Food Safety Law clearly stipulates that the content of food advertisements shall be true and legal, shall not contain false content, and shall not involve disease prevention and treatment functions
.
The Advertising Law stipulates that health food advertisements shall not contain "assertions or guarantees indicating efficacy and safety", "involving disease prevention and treatment functions", "claiming or implying that the advertised goods are necessary to protect health", "comparing with drugs and other health foods", etc.
, and health food advertisements shall clearly indicate that "this product cannot replace drugs"
.

Online anchors are accustomed to confusing the concepts of food and medicine, or "elevating" ordinary food into health food or even medicine, or "elevating" health food into medicine or exaggerating the role of health food, touching the "red line" of the law and infringing on consumers' right to know and choice
.
Some consumers mistakenly believe the anchor's foolishness and take ordinary food or health food as medicine, some delay treatment, and some worsen their illness
.
It is worth noting that the elderly are more concerned about health issues, so they are more likely to fall into the health food routine of live streaming
.

In fact, this kind of water-injected marketing routine also exists offline, and now it has spread online, with a greater effect and wider impact
.

For the water-injected health food marketing routines that are popular in the live broadcast room and have almost become "clear rules", the relevant responsible entities must increase their efforts to rectify
.
The live streaming platform shall assume the responsibility for the management of the anchor, strictly review the food business qualifications and health food business qualifications of the anchor and the live broadcast room or relevant operators, strengthen the supervision of the anchor's marketing behavior through the method of "big data monitoring + manual screening", and promptly take measures such as stopping the broadcast and removing the broadcast, and report
to the regulatory authorities.

Market supervision departments should be guided by the marketing problems of anchors' water-injected health foods, comprehensively investigate the behavior of anchors bringing food and health food, actively collect clues through complaint and reporting channels, and lawfully employ measures such as investigation, order corrections, exposure, and credit punishment for problems that are verified to be true, and release warning information to consumers, forcing online anchors and relevant businesses to enhance their awareness of self-discipline, standardize marketing behavior, and block fooling "words"
.

Consumers should also be more rational when purchasing related foods or health foods, do not blindly trust the promotion of platforms and anchors, and do not blindly place orders
.
Try to choose regular offline stores or official flagship stores, carefully check the business qualifications of merchants, look at the manuals and related signs of related products, and recognize the functional differences between ordinary food, health food and medicine, only in this way can we be less fooled
.

(Li Yingfeng)

China Food News(2023.
01.
04.
06)

(Responsible editor: Zhu Meiqiao)