The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
Diet Premium's baseless slimming claims drew Tokyo's first stealth-marketing order
Tokyo's first local stealth-marketing order hit diet-maker Diet Premium over 'carbon cleanse' slimming claims it admitted had no reasonable evidence.
Diet Premium · 2025-03-28
What happened
Diet Premium Inc. marketed its '酵素づくしのべっぴん炭クレンズ' (enzyme-rich beauty charcoal cleanse) supplement with copy claiming anyone could 'easily achieve abdominal slimming without diet or exercise' and that the product was 'supported by celebrities' and ranked '#1 in the United States'.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government judged the claims misleading and on 28 March 2025 issued an administrative order under Articles 5(1) and 5(3) of the Act Against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. It was the first order by a local government under the stealth-marketing notice that took effect in 2023.
Asked for evidence, the company admitted it held no reasonable basis for the slimming and celebrity-endorsement claims. Tokyo ordered Diet Premium to stop the representations and to make clear to consumers that the product had not been shown to work as advertised.
Why it happened
- The company sold slimming as a certainty while holding no evidence it worked
- Claiming celebrity support and a US 'number one' ranking it could not substantiate
- Presenting the product as a painless fix, the kind of promise regulators police hardest
The lesson
A diet claim is only as defensible as the study behind it. Selling 'no-diet slimming' with no data and borrowing endorsements you cannot prove hands a regulator an open-and-shut case.
Aftermath
The order marked the first time a local government enforced the stealth-marketing notice, signalling that prefectural and city consumer agencies would now police influencer-style endorsements alongside the national CAA. Diet Premium was required to publish a correction and stop the offending copy.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
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