The FTC’s crackdown on natural health claims threatens free speech and consumer choice—and ANH-USA is fighting back to protect your right to know how foods and supplements can heal.
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THE TOPLINE
- The FTC is forcing natural health companies to meet pharmaceutical-style standards—like requiring randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—to make health claims, a demand that is unrealistic, unscientific, and unconstitutional.
- These restrictions silence truthful, evidence-backed information about food and supplement benefits while protecting Big Pharma’s monopoly over treatments.
- In a formal petition, ANH-USA urges the FTC to ditch the de facto RCT requirement, embrace a totality-of-evidence approach, ban legal abuses, and restore transparency and scientific integrity to health-product regulation.
It’s sad but true: the government doesn’t want you learning about the healing power of foods and nutrients.
There’s been a long history of the government censoring speech about the benefits of natural foods and supplements, but a tipping point was reached in 2023 when the feds launched an aggressive crackdown on the natural health community. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent warning letters to 670 companies—including makers of dietary supplements, homeopathic products, and functional foods—threatening massive civil penalties (up to $50,120 per violation) for making health claims that don’t meet the agency’s absurd, pharma-style standards.
If it’s harder for food and supplement companies to make health claims, then consumers are denied vital information at the point of purchase about how these products can help them heal and optimize health.
Now, ANH is fighting back. On May 27, 2025, ANH-USA filed a petition with the FTC—joined by our partners Xlear, Inc. and Better Way Health—demanding urgent reforms to how the agency regulates health product advertising. Our petition exposes the FTC’s censorship tactics and calls for a return to scientific integrity, constitutional rights, and common sense.
“The FTC has been unlawfully censoring scientifically supported health information,” said Rob Verkerk PhD, ANH-USA’s Executive Director. “Our petition calls on the FTC to stop silencing truthful, non-misleading speech and start respecting both the Constitution and scientific integrity.”
“No agency is above the law,” added ANH General Counsel Jonathan Emord. “Especially when it suppresses the very speech that helps Americans make informed health decisions.”
What’s the FTC Doing—and Why It’s Dangerous
The FTC, in conjunction with the FDA, is trying to impose drug standards on dietary supplements and natural products. That means requiring companies to substantiate health claims with randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—the gold standard for pharmaceutical drugs, but totally inappropriate for nutrients and food-based products.
Why? Because nutrients can’t be strongly patented. Clinical trials are incredibly expensive, and natural product companies can’t recoup those costs the way drug companies can. Requiring RCTs is a backdoor ban on most health claims—and the agencies know it. What’s being billed as consumer protection is just Big Pharma profit protection.
The FTC’s 2022 revision to its Health Products Compliance Guidance signaled this shift. It now demands RCTs as the primary form of “competent and reliable scientific evidence” for health-related claims. The agency even suggests that two RCTs may be necessary, echoing its earlier stance in the Pom Wonderful case. This sets the stage for far more censorship of useful, scientifically-backed claims.
A Pattern of Suppression
This is only the latest chapter in a long campaign to limit what you’re allowed to know about the healing power of food, supplements, and natural medicine:
- Cherry and walnut growers were threatened by the FDA for linking to peer-reviewed studies on their websites.
- Doctors were silenced during COVID for recommending vitamin D and zinc.
- Xlear, a nasal spray company, was dragged into litigation for sharing results of over a dozen studies on its product’s potential benefits—litigation the DOJ finally dropped with prejudice in March 2025.
And the problem goes beyond our borders. US regulators are pushing to “harmonize” with the European Union’s oppressive model, where nearly all botanical claims have been banned and only a few vitamin/mineral claims are allowed. We cannot let that happen here.
What ANH-USA’s Petition Demands
We’re urging the FTC to:
- End the de facto “two-RCT” requirement.
- Adopt a “totality of the evidence” standard, consistent with real-world science and FDA precedent.
- Ban abusive legal tactics, like mid-trial theory swaps and ghostwritten expert reports.
- Require real evidence of harm or deception, like consumer survey data, before launching enforcement.
- Launch formal rulemaking, so future changes can be debated in public—not dictated behind closed doors.
Expanding access to credible information about the healing power of foods and supplements would be a major public health victory. Without the unnecessary barriers imposed by the FTC and other federal agencies, consumers could make more informed, health-promoting choices at the point of sale—choices that would ultimately help reduce the burden of chronic disease.
Stand with ANH in the fight for free speech and health autonomy by donating to our legal war chest!
