Publisher Health

An advert posted by Katie Price on Instagram, which promoted a low calorie diet for The Skinny Food Co, has been banned by the advertising watchdog.

In the video, posted last August, the former glamour model detailed her meals adding up to only 755 calories a day.

The NHS states the recommended daily intake is around 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 for men.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the ad was “irresponsible” and must not appear again.

Price has taken the advert down from her Instagram account.

In the Instagram Reel for the diet food firm, the TV personality was seen making meals for herself throughout the day and talking about her efforts to lose weight.

Her day started with porridge and a “delicious” coffee with zero calorie syrup.

For lunch, she had a wrap with zero calorie garlic mayonnaise sauce on top, while dinner consisted of a low calorie chicken tikka curry.

The video ended with Price having low calorie chocolate malt balls as a post-dinner snack.

In her caption for the video, Price wrote: “All of this was only 755 calories and helping me stay in a calorie deficit to shift some extra pounds when needed.”

Price said her children also “loved” the products, adding: “If I have a bad day I like to go in a calorie deficit to ensure it’s not a bad week!”

The ASA said that it had received two complaints that the advert irresponsibly promoted a low calorie diet.

In the UK, adverts promoting diets that fall below 800 calories must do so only for short term use and must encourage users to take medical advice before embarking on them.

But the ASA found that the The Skinny Food Co advert included no explicit instruction that the diet must only be followed on a short-term basis, nor any reference to the need to take medical advice before embarking on it.

It warned that consumers would understand from the ad that they could choose to follow a similar diet, that fell below 800 calories a day, without taking medical advice, until they achieved their desired weight.

“For the above reasons, we concluded that the ad irresponsibly promoted a diet that fell below 800 kcal a day,” the ASA said.

The ASA also received one complaint that the post was not obviously recognisable as an advert.

Not Guilty Food Co Ltd, which trades as The Skinny Food Co, said that the reel included the hashtag #ad. It also said it could not control what Price ate, but that being in a “calorie deficit” was a proven way to achieve weight loss.

But the ASA said the hashtag #ad was not visible without expanding the text.

It therefore concluded that the label was insufficiently prominent to obviously identify the post as an advert from the outset.

It also told The Skinny Food Co and Price to ensure that future adverts were obviously identifiable as marketing communications, and the commercial intent was made clear, and that identifiers such as #ad were clearly displayed.

Price subsequently agreed to remove the advert, saying she followed a calorie deficit approach, which she believed many people in the UK did. She also asked for further information on how to make similar posts compliant in future.

Finally, the ASA also found that because the advert made specific health claims that were not authorised on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register, it broke the rules.

“We also told them to ensure that their ads did not irresponsibly promote diets that fell below 800 kcal a day, and to only make weight loss or weight maintenance claims for foods if the claim was authorised on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register and the foods met the associated conditions of use.”

The watchdog concluded the ad must not appear again in the form that that was subject to complaints.

The Skinny Food Co and Katie Price have not yet responded to a request for comment from BBC News.