Whitworths has drawn the ire of the ASA for making a “misleading” nutritional claim in an Instagram post.
It investigated two issues relating to an Instagram post by Whitworths seen in August 2025, which featured a carousel of photographs of three of its 1ders snacks outside of a supermarket.
The post featured separate images of Energising Nut Mix, Energising Fruit & Nut Mix, and a mixed box of Brain Boosting Apricots and Immunity Boost Mangos.
The caption stated: “Each powerful little pack of Whitworths 1ders contains equivalent nutrition to one portion of your 5 a day, with multipacks containing five individual bags.”
A complainant challenged whether the post misleadingly implied that all the products in the range contained one portion of a person’s 5 a day. Furthermore, they asserted that the claim “equivalent nutrition to one portion of your 5 a day” was a comparative nutrition claim that breached the Code.
Whitworths provided its Nuts, Seeds & Dried Fruits white paper, published in April 2024, which explains that 25g or 30g servings of these foods provide meaningful amounts of fibre and nutrients.
The Instagram post, by using the term “equivalent nutrition”, highlighted the nutritional content of a single pack of the product, it argued.
Despite this, the ASA upheld both elements of the complaint. It considered that consumers were likely to understand from the claim that any pack of 1ders would count towards the government’s recommended five portions of fruits and vegetables. However, only the mixed apricot and mango pack would count.
Meanwhile, the nutrition claim was not authorised on the GB NHC Register and was, therefore, in breach of the Code.
The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in the form complained of.
A ‘scientifically defensible’ statement
When approached by The Grocer, Whitworths commercial director Phil Gowland stressed that the company “did not claim that our 1ders products ‘count as’ one of your 5 a day”.
“We were very deliberately careful not to use that language,” he said.
“What we stated was that a single pack contains equivalent nutrition to a portion of 5 a day – a scientifically defensible statement grounded in compositional data showing that nuts, seeds and dried fruits deliver comparable or greater levels of key micronutrients and fibre per serving than an 80g portion of many commonly consumed vegetables.
“In a world where diet-related disease is the UK’s biggest preventable health challenge, it is perverse that brands trying to communicate nutrient density, whole-food quality and evidence-based health contribution are constrained more tightly than ultra-processed products making soft, emotive wellness claims with little scientific substance.
“The current system does not reward nutritional truth; it rewards regulatory linguistics.”
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