Why No Supplement Brand Can Legally Tell You What Its Ingredients Do

Read enough supplement packaging and you notice something odd. Ingredients get described in careful, almost evasive language — "traditionally used for", "associated with" — while the one thing you actually want to know is never quite said.

There is a specific legal reason for that, and it is worth understanding, because it also tells you something useful about the brands that ignore it.

The rule

Health claims on food and food supplements in Great Britain are governed by retained Regulation (EC) 1924/2006. The principle is simple: a health claim may only be made if it appears on the Great Britain Nutrition and Health Claims Register.

Not "if it is true". Not "if there is evidence". If it is on the register.

Everything else is prohibited, regardless of what any study found. It is a permission-based system, not an honesty-based one.

The part almost nobody knows

Here is where it gets genuinely interesting. When the regulation came in, thousands of claims about plant and fungal ingredients were submitted for assessment. That process stalled.

Around 2,078 botanical health claims remain "on hold" — submitted, never finally determined, sitting in regulatory limbo for over a decade.

And the reason matters. Where the European Food Safety Authority did assess plant-substance claims, the overwhelming reason for not granting them was the absence of human intervention studies — not evidence that the ingredients did nothing.

That is a crucial distinction. "Not proven" and "disproven" are entirely different states, and the regulatory system does not distinguish between them in what it lets you say. An ingredient with promising mechanistic research and two small trials is in exactly the same legal position as one with nothing at all: silence.

Which is why labels lean on vitamins

This explains a pattern you can now spot everywhere. Look at almost any botanical supplement and the only concrete functional statements on it concern vitamins and minerals.

Those went through the assessment and came out the other side. Vitamin B6, for instance, carries authorised claims for contributing to normal psychological function, the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, and the regulation of hormonal activity. Those are on the register, so they can be stated plainly.

The botanical alongside it may have more interesting research behind it. It still cannot be described, because its paperwork was never finished.

So what about the brands making bold claims?

You have seen the adverts. Burn body fat. Cure your anxiety. Fix your gut. Boost your immune system.

Those are not brave marketing. They are unlawful.

• Unauthorised health claims breach the retained regulation, whether or not the brand believes them.
• Weight-loss claims referring to the rate or amount of weight loss are prohibited outright — there is no version of "lose 10lb in a fortnight" that is legal on a food product.
• Claims that a product treats, prevents or cures a disease are not merely unauthorised — they make the product a medicine by definition. That moves it into MHRA territory, and selling an unlicensed medicine is a considerably more serious matter than a rap on the knuckles from an advertising regulator.

Enforcement runs through the Advertising Standards Authority and the CAP Code for advertising, and through Trading Standards for labelling. Neither is fast, which is why so much of this stays visible for so long.

What this means when you are choosing something

The useful inversion: the more confident the health claim, the less you should trust the brand making it.

Not because the ingredient is necessarily bad, but because a brand willing to break a clear labelling law in order to sell you something has told you how it weighs your interests against its own. If they are relaxed about the rules governing what they say, it is fair to wonder how relaxed they are about what goes in the bottle, and whether anyone has checked.

The more useful signals are the ones that are legal to give and awkward to fake: what is actually in it and at what dose, whether it has been tested and whether those results are published, and whether the brand distinguishes between "traditionally used", "studied for" and "proven to".

A brand that says "we cannot legally tell you what this does, so here is the research and you can decide" is not being coy. It is being accurate — and, for now, it is the only thing anyone is allowed to do.

Sources

1. Retained Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods. Guidance to compliance, GOV.UK.
2. Great Britain Nutrition and Health Claims Register (GB NHC Register).
3. Landscape of Herbal Food Supplements: Where Do We Stand with Health Claims? PubMed Central, PMC12073160 — on the 2,078 botanical claims held pending final decision, and the role of absent human intervention studies.
4. Advertising Standards Authority / CAP. Food: Health claims. asa.org.uk.