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Activia Ad with Jamie Lee Curtis

Published by tummyblogger March 22nd, 2008 in Probiotics, Digesting Information, Dannon Activia Yogurt

See also the post on Dannon Activia.
You’ve got to be skeptical about the benefits of Activia when the ad I saw tonight said: “Eighty-seven percent of us report some problems with regularity and can [”therefore” is implied] benefit from Dannon Activia, with bifidis regularis.” That is my paraphrase of what I heard about an hour ago. My instant reaction was that either the 87% includes people with IBS or it doesn’t

  1. If people with IBS are included, then Dannon is making a medical statement that we can benefit from eating Activia, when it fact it may give us violent diarrhea (on top of “normal” diarrhea) because some of us are lactose intolerant. I don’t think that’s a benefit of eating Activia.
  2. If only people who don’t have IBS are included in the 87%, then that implies that the remaining 13% is composed of people who never have regularity issues and don’t need Activia, and people who *do* have “regularity issues”–because they have IBS–and *shouldn’t* eat Activia.

My guess is that if the statistic is *real* then what they did was ask, in a survey, “Do you ever have irregularity for any reason.” If that is the basis, then option #1 above applies. Dannon Activia is making a medical statement in promoting Activia as usable and beneficial for everyone in their 87% group, regardless of lactose intolerance. Or did they cook the statistic by weeding out people who had already told them they were lactose intolerant?

Someday we’ll know.

Again, the link to the previous post on Activia, and the comments.

2 Responses to “Activia Ad with Jamie Lee Curtis”  

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  1. 1 Loren May 6th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    I subscribe to a health mag that is independent and accepts no advertising. They did a study on Activa and similar yogurts and said that they offer no additional benefits that regular yogurt doesn’t already offer except for the increased price!

  2. 2 tummyblogger May 8th, 2008 at 2:40 am

    Hi, Loren
    Thanks for your comment. I appreciate the information about independent conclusions on the benefits of Activia.

    All the best,
    Tummyblogger

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