The authority has also cautioned all beauty clinics, wellness centers, and service providers in India using CoolSculpting machines to strictly comply with these norms.
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has imposed a penalty of Rs 3 lakh on VLCC Limited for publishing misleading advertisements about fat-loss and slimming treatments using the US-FDA approved CoolSculpting procedure.
This comes shortly after CCPA had penalized Kaya Limited with the same amount for similar violations, where the company’s ads claimed “Non-surgical Fat Reduction” and “easy inch loss with CoolSculpting,” while using before-and-after images that misrepresented the treatment as a weight-loss solution. Kaya has since complied and deposited the penalty.
The regulator acted on a complaint and routine monitoring of slimming and beauty sector ads. It found that VLCC misled consumers by projecting CoolSculpting and other procedures as permanent weight-loss solutions, with exaggerated promises such as:
- “Lose up to 600g and 7 cm in 1 session” - “Drop 1 Size in 1 session permanently” - “Drop one size in one hour” - “With Lipolaser Lose 6cm and 400g in one session”
Such advertisements, CCPA observed, went far beyond the actual approval granted to the CoolSculpting machine, which is only cleared for localized fat reduction in specific body areas and not for weight loss.
The CoolSculpting machine, manufactured by Zeltiq Aesthetics, is approved by the US-FDA for treatment of localized fat...
The authority has also cautioned all beauty clinics, wellness centers, and service providers in India using CoolSculpting machines to strictly comply with these norms. The Central Consumer Protect...