Opinion Truth in advertising By Scott T. Hards	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
宣伝の真実 商品の品質や賞味期限の偽装が事件になってから消費者は商品の中身に敏感になってきているがきちんとした根拠に基づかない商品広告は現在でも続いている。そういった広告を取り締まらなければ消費者も満足できないのではないか。

About 18 months ago, Japan's consumers were frightened by a string of incidents where foreign objects were found inside food packages. Nails, glass, insects — you name it, somebody found it. But now, the public's attention has shifted from what's in the package to what's on it — specifically to the words printed there, and whether it's OK to believe them.

The latest trouble started as a spin off from the mad cow disease scare. Snow Brand Food Products was revealed to have been intentionally mislabeling imported beef as domestic beef in order to sell it back to the government. As the investigation widened, it became clear that beef products were far from the only item being mislabeled.

And worse, the trouble was not limited to Snow Brand Food Products, though that company paid most heavily for its sins, ultimately declaring bankruptcy and being liquidated. Many producers and supermarkets were found to be labeling items as more expensive varieties of the package's true contents. Falsifying the origin of a product was common.

In other cases, use-by dates were intentionally falsified. There's nothing like selling nearly spoiled food at top prices as a way to pad your bottom line!

This sort of deceptive packaging or false advertising about products in general is a problem that I think Japan should have taken steps to address much earlier. Besides food products, there are many other items promoted here with outright lies.

Take, for example, the current fad for electronic, abdominal muscle-stimulating "exercise" devices. If the claims being made about these products are true, in a few weeks I'm going to be the only person left in Japan without washboard abs (a lean, trim belly rippling with muscles). One ad I saw for such a device actually claimed you get the "same effect as doing 500 sit-ups in just 10 minutes."Oh, please! If I did 500 sit-ups in 10 minutes, I'd be so sore I couldn't move for a week.

Yes, electric pulses move muscles — I saw that happen in high school in a dead frog. But without resistance on the muscle when you move it, there's very little benefit. That's why a marathon runner like Naoko Takahashi doesn't have huge leg muscles despite all that running she does. It's interesting to note that many of the products making wild claims like this appear to have originated in the United States, so this problem is hardly limited to Japan!

Or what about magnets as pain relievers? One large, well-known health products manufacturer here sells cute little magnets with adhesive tape so you can stick them on your body wherever it hurts. The interesting thing is that it's illegal in the United States and Britain to make any medical claims in advertisements for magnets, as no reputable study has ever shown any benefits from their use. People who believe they work need to study the placebo effect! Yet these magnets, along with hundreds of other alternative drugs, herbal liquors, vitamin pills and pep drinks are allowed to be marketed despite there being no evidence that they work.

Sure, very few people are being physically injured by any of these items, but their pocketbooks are taking a blow when they spend money on things that simply don't work as advertised. As I've written here before, I'm in favor of promoting consumer spending to help get Japan out of its economic slump, but let's do it without lies!

Shukan ST: May 24, 2002

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