Five products claiming to aid children’s growth make exaggerated claims or have misleading descriptions, the Consumers’ Foundation said yesterday, calling on authorities to fine the companies behind the products.
The products’ labels promise an “improved constitution,” “increased activity in the epiphyseal plates” which are responsible for bone growth, “increased secretion of growth hormones,” “improved bone growth,” “increased absorption of nutrients,” “stimulating second growth in bones” and “improved growth rate,” the foundation said.
Such labels violate Food and Drug Administration labeling rules, the foundation said.
Photo: CNA
Picture labels indicating changes in height and reading “fastest growth,” “grow 5cm to 12cm in no time,” “grow 5cm in 4 months” and the like also contravene the regulations, the foundation said.
Of the five offending companies, the foundation said that one, whose labels said it could “prevent osteoporosis,” might have violated rules prohibiting exaggeration of medical effects.
The offenders should be fined in accordance with the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), it said.
Under the act, producers whose labels exaggerate effects or give misleading directions could be fined NT$40,000 to NT$4 million (US$1,309 to US$130,929) and brands that are found to make spurious health claims could be fined NT$60,000 to NT$5 million.
Yu cited a 2015 poll by the China Grain Products Research & Development Institute on dietary supplements as estimating the value of the local dietary supplement market at NT$71.6 billion per year.
The government should especially step up checks on products of unknown origin sold at night markets or on underground radio stations, he said.
Height is determined by genetics, nutrition, sleep quality and quantity of exercise, Yu said, adding that parents should first improve their children’s dietary and living habits if they worry about their height.
Additional reporting by CNA
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching