(Ab)use of Health Claims in Websites: The Case of Italian Bottled Waters

The massive use of web marketing makes the monitoring of nutrition and health claims used in advertising campaigns much more difficult. The present study aimed at reviewing the website content for bottled waters produced in Italy to assess (i) if nutrition and health claims are reported, (ii) what types of nutrition and health claims are reported most frequently, and (iii) if the nutrition and health claims could be considered appropriate according to the current regulation in the field. A review of the website content of the 253 bottled waters produced in Italy and reported in the annual report of Bevitalia 2016–2017 was conducted. For each brand, indications related to the preventive, curative or therapeutic properties of the water reported were examined. Bottled waters that included potentially misleading information apparently not consistent with the European Directive on the exploitation and marketing of natural mineral waters were identified. Forty bottled waters with uncertain website content were identified. The information reported in the websites referred most often to beneficial effects for urinary tract and cardiovascular systems. Present results highlight, using the bottled water case study, that website content sometimes happens to deliver misleading information to consumers, also thanks to uncertain regulation in this sensitive field.