The National Advertising Division has recommended that Trinity Sports Group, LLC, discontinue certain claims for the company’s “NeuroImpact” dietary supplement, including claims that the product has been clinically tested.

NAD noted, however, that the advertiser provided a reasonable basis for “carefully qualified ingredient claims regarding the ability of certain ingredients” in NeuroImpact “to support healthy brain function.”
  
NAD is an investigative unit of the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation. It is administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

As part of its ongoing monitoring program and, in conjunction with NAD’s initiative with the Council for Responsible Nutrition to expand the review of advertising claims for dietary supplements, NAD opened an inquiry into claims that made by TSC that included:


•      “Brain Recovery Support for Contact Sports”
•      “Clinically Tested”
•      “Proven Results”
•      “Patent-pending product clinically proven to support proper neurological function after contact sports.”

NAD also examined the advertiser’s testimonials.

TSG explained that NeuroImpact contains a patent-pending blend of vitamins, supplements, and herbs that it markets to athletes who participate in contact sports to support brain recovery. TSG argued that in addition to following medical recommendations for concussion recovery (including brain rest from video gaming, texting, and active engagement), NeuroImpact can be used as a nutritional supplement to support brain recovery.

Following its review of the evidence in the record, NAD determined that because many of the ingredients in Neuro-Impact are well-researched and understood to support the health or functioning of the brain, “it is possible that TSG could make limited claims about the role of its ingredients in supporting healthy brain function.”

NAD cautioned the advertiser, however, that advertising claims should match the strength of the research supporting them. In general, claims that are based on emerging research of ingredients in a product should indicate that the claims are based on research on the ingredients and that the research is emerging and limited in their advertising claims. 

Regarding the advertiser’s testimonials, NAD noted that it has “routinely held that an advertiser may not make claims through consumer testimonials that could not be substantiated if made independently by the advertiser and that anecdotal evidence, based solely on the experiences of individual consumers, is insufficient to support product efficacy claims.”

In this case, NAD noted, the advertiser didn’t provide a reasonable basis for its efficacy claims, and, as a result couldn’t support the claims made in its testimonials. NAD recommended that the testimonials be discontinued.

In its advertiser’s statement, Trinity Sports Group said that while it disagreed with NAD’s conclusions, “in the spirit of self-regulation, we will take NAD’s recommendations into account in future advertising.”