FDA Warns of Misleading Health Claims on Nestle Kids’ Drinks

The Food and Drug Administration has sent warning letters to food maker Nestle about misleading claims the company makes about the health benefits of some of its children’s beverages.

Several Juicy Juice and Boost Kid Essentials Nutritionally Complete brand drinks, which are aimed at children under age two, are promoted by Nestle as “medical food” with “no sugar added” but do not meet federal standards for those claims, the FDA said in warning letters sent to the company earlier this month.

The FDA said a review of the labeling on Juicy Juice Brain Development Fruit Juice Beverage (Apple), Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine, and Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Grape determined the products are misbranded in violation of federal law.

The labeling claim that the Juicy Juice drinks help “support brain development” in young children and other claims made in promoting the drinks run afoul of FDA regulations for advertising, the agency said.

Regarding the company’s BOOST Kid Essentials Nutritionally Complete Drink in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors, the FDA takes exception to Nestle’s promotion of the drinks as “medical food” suitable for treating the medical condition of “failure to thrive” in newborns and for “pre/post surgery, injury or trauma, chronic illnesses.”

By law, medical food is “a food which is formulated to be consumed or administered enterally under the supervision of a physician and which is intended for the specific dietary management of a disease or condition for which distinctive nutritional requirements, based on recognized scientific principles, are established by medical evaluation,” the FDA said. The BOOST beverages fail to meet that standard but are still marketed as such.

Nestle has 15 days from receipt of the warning letters to tell the FDA how the company plans to bring its marketing of the drinks into compliance with federal laws. Failure to do so could result in further actions against the company, including seizure of the offending products and injunctions to stop their distribution, the FDA warned.

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