Recruitment of 11.5 billion won for misleading advertisements on drugs such as ‘food intake inhibitors and fat emission agents’Exaggeration of effects on simple olive oil and lemon juice products ‘detox and slow aging’
“Eating stomach fat,” “Fat emitter,” “Short-term rapid weight loss.”
Government authorities have caught a large number of companies that made tens of billions of won in unfair profits by deceiving ordinary food as if it were an obesity treatment or appetite suppressant
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on the 23rd that it had detected 26 companies that violated the “Act on Labeling and Advertising of Food, etc.” and asked local governments to take administrative measures and filed a complaint against them as a result of intensive inspection of online unfair advertisements in response to increased demand for diet foods in the summer
Companies caught this time misled consumers with drug-level efficacy and effects. In particular, it advocates “Ole shot (olive oil + lemon juice)” and “Natural Wigobi and Mounjaro recipe (olive oil + boiled egg),” which are popular on social media (SNS) recently, and exaggerated advertisements as if general olive oil or lemon juice mixed products have effects such as “detox,” “low-speed aging,” “anti-oxidation,” and “anti-inflammatory.”
Some companies have used expressions such as ‘GLP-1’ (food intake inhibitory hormone) to mask part of the name of obesity treatment (e.g., WeOB, MaunOO) to induce them to misidentify general foods as pharmaceuticals
They used a method of exposing provocative phrases with SNS short-form (short video) contents using celebrities, pharmacists, and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated virtual figures and then luring them to their sales pages. In order to avoid crackdowns, the connected sales mall deleted the expression or showed dexterity in lowering the level
They sold about 600,000 products with such unfair advertisements, and the sales amount is about 11.5 billion won. It has been confirmed that some companies have taken unfair profits up to 27.5 times, selling products worth about 2,000 won at 60,000 won
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety urged consumers to pay special attention, saying, “When purchasing food online, we should not be misled by advertisements that show drug-level efficacy.” “In the future, we will establish a sound food distribution order by strengthening inspections of new advertising methods such as SNS shortforms and AI-generated content,” he said
