TruHeight Lawsuit Claims Children’s Supplements Do Not Meaningfully Promote Growth as Advertised

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The maker of TruHeight children’s nutritional supplements faces a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the products do not promote or accelerate growth as advertised.

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The 24-page false advertising lawsuit contends that TruHeight children’s dietary supplements, marketed for kids between five and 10 years old, purport to “Help Kids Grow,” with claims that the products’ formula “Supports Growth” and “Supports Bone Growth and Development.” However, the case says that the primary clinical study to support claims for its powders, capsules and gummies showed that children in the target age range who took the supplements had “worse growth outcomes” than those who did not.

“In that study, children under the age of 10 who consumed no Product at all experienced growth equal to or greater than children who consumed Defendant’s supplement,” the complaint summarizes, noting that TruHeight “omits these material facts from its advertising.”

Per the filing, defendant Vanilla Chip LLC’s  allegedly false claims about the effectiveness of its TruHeight supplements are based on a six-month clinical study that evaluated the height differences in children between the ages of four and 17. The case explains that the study used a height standard deviation score (SDS) that compared a child’s height to the average for other children of the same age and sex, which would reveal any “meaningful increase” in a child’s growth from the supplements.

The lawsuit alleges that the clinical study, which is referenced repeatedly on the TruHeight website and product pages, was riddled with issues, namely that it covered an “unusually broad” range of ages spanning “multiple developmental stages,” which is critical given that the product is supposedly geared toward kids five to 10. Furthermore, the study had no proper control group, as children who were not given the supplement continued with their non-standardized “usual diet,” which the case insists introduced “significant expectation and reporting bias.”

Notably, results from the clinical study showed that children taking TruHeight supplements demonstrated “no statistically significant increase” in growth compared to children who did not. In fact, children who did not take TruHeight supplements had a height SDS of +0.10, while those who did had a height SDS of +0.09, the lawsuit says. “Incredibly,” the case continues, control group children under the age of 10 grew more in “raw centimeters,” adding a combined total of 3.33 centimeters to their height compared to 3.14 centimeters from the test group who consumed the TruHeight supplements.

“The study therefore does not merely fail to substantiate [Vanilla Chip’s] growth claims for younger children; it associated the product with inferior growth outcomes relative to ordinary diet alone in that age group,” the lawsuit reads.

Furthermore, the TruHeight website includes a section titled “Other Relevant Studies,” which features ostensible scientific evidence to support claims that the growth enhancement supplements perform as advertised, the lawsuit says. However, the suit drills down into the studies, saying that none of them were conducted with or on TruHeight products.

The class action lawsuit accuses Vanilla Chip of selectively using the studies to create an “inferential chain” supporting the purported efficacy of its products.

“[E]ach source establishes a genuine but general scientific proposition, and [Vanilla Chip] asks consumers to chain those propositions together to reach a conclusion that no cited study ever reaches,” the lawsuit contends.

According to the case, Vanilla Chip “sponsored, funded, and controlled” the clinical study on TruHeight supplements’ effectiveness and had “direct access” to information that demonstrated the products were not associated with any meaningful growth increase for children ages five to 10.

Per the complaint, TruHeight’s website and marketing materials “prominently displayed” a claim that “[i]n a clinical study kids who took TruHeight grew 32.63% more than those who didn’t” until public scrutiny led to the company removing the representation. TruHeight then substituted a claim that said that children taking the supplements experienced 43.91 percent higher levels of Collagen X, a “surrogate biomarker” that is “not a direct measure of height or growth,” the lawsuit says.

“Defendant’s removal of the ‘32.63% more growth’ claim following public scrutiny of its marketing practices, and its replacement with a different but equally misleading metric, demonstrates Defendant’s awareness that its growth claims are false and unsupportable, and evidences consciousness of the wrongful nature of its conduct,” the lawsuit charges.

The case says there is no legitimate evidence to suggest the advertising claims that TruHeight supplements have any impact on a child’s growth.

The TruHeight class action lawsuit seeks to cover all consumers who purchased TruHeight products in the United States during the class period.

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