Two completely different rulebooks apply depending on whether you are marketing a food product or marketing yourself. Conflating them is why most dietitians get this wrong, and why many are more cautious than they need to be about their own services.
The genuinely useful part is counter-intuitive. Regulation is usually experienced as a constraint. Here, your HCPC registration is the thing that permits claims your unregulated competitors cannot legally make.
Which rulebook applies to what?
| What you are marketing | Governed by | The core rule |
|---|---|---|
| A food, drink or supplement | Regulation (EC) 1924/2006, via the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register | Only registered claims, in the authorised wording |
| Your own professional services | CAP Code section 12 | Objective claims must be substantiated, and treatment claims need you to be suitably qualified |
They are separate systems with separate enforcement, and a single Instagram post can engage both.
Marketing a food or supplement
If you are promoting a product, you are in the nutrition and health claims regime.
Only claims on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims (NHC) Register may be used. That is a published list maintained on GOV.UK, and it is exhaustive rather than illustrative.
Three rules that catch people out.
The authorised wording must be used, not paraphrased. The register gives approved phrasing for each claim. Rewriting an authorised claim into something snappier for a caption is a breach, even where the meaning is preserved. This is the single most common error.
The product must meet the conditions of use. Each authorised claim comes with conditions, typically a minimum quantity of the nutrient per serving. A claim that is authorised in general is not authorised for a product that does not meet them.
General wellbeing references need an anchor. Vague statements about health or wellbeing are only permitted when accompanied by a specific authorised claim from the register.
Marketing your own services
Different regime entirely. This is the CAP Code, enforced by the ASA.
Rule 12.1 requires objective claims to be substantiated. For health therapies, CAP expects clinical evidence, and its stated benchmark is at least one adequately controlled experimental human study.
Rule 12.2 is the one that matters most: a claim to diagnose, treat or help a medical condition is unacceptable unless the advertiser is suitably qualified.
CAP assesses "suitably qualified" on a set of factors: professional qualifications, whether competence has been reviewed, whether the practitioner holds suitable professional indemnity covering all services provided, and whether they are accredited by a body with complaints and disciplinary procedures and minimum training standards.
Why registration is an asset, not a burden
Read that list of factors again against what HCPC registration gives you.
Professional qualifications assessed against a standard. Ongoing competence requirements. Mandatory indemnity as a condition of registration. A regulator with a complaints and fitness-to-practise process and published minimum training standards.
An HCPC-registered dietitian clears the rule 12.2 bar comfortably. You can, with proper substantiation, advertise that you help with a named condition.
A nutritional therapist cannot say the same thing. CAP's own guidance on nutritional therapy states that the ASA and CAP have yet to see evidence that nutritional therapy can be used to treat or prevent disease or medical conditions, and warns that condition-specific claims risk discouraging people from seeking essential treatment unless supervised by a suitably qualified professional. It also warns nutritional therapists against blurring themselves with the protected terms "dietitian" and "dietician".
So the practical position is the reverse of how it usually feels. Your registration is a marketing permission. Our guide to whether you can call yourself a nutritionist covers the other side of that line.
That said, "suitably qualified" gets you past the gate. It does not exempt you from rule 12.1. You still have to substantiate what you claim.
The Article 12 trap that catches brand partnerships
This one is genuinely obscure and it affects the most commercial thing many dietitians do.
Article 12 of Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 prohibits health claims that refer to recommendations of individual doctors or health professionals.
Which means a brand cannot lawfully market its product on the basis that a named dietitian recommends it, in the way it might use a celebrity endorsement. The individual practitioner endorsement is exactly what the Article restricts.
Article 11 treats national associations differently. Recommendations from national associations of medical, nutrition or dietetic professionals, and from health-related charities, sit under a different provision.
If you do paid partnerships, this is worth raising with the brand before signing, because the brand's agency may not know it and you are the one whose professional standing is attached to the campaign. It does not prevent you working with food brands. It shapes how your involvement can be described.
Practical rules for your own marketing
Six that will keep you out of trouble.
- Know which regime you are in before you write the caption. Promoting a product, or promoting yourself?
- Check the NHC register for any product claim, and copy the authorised wording exactly
- Keep substantiation on file for every condition-specific claim about your services, and make sure it is human clinical evidence
- Do not let a website builder or agency write your health copy without a review. They will optimise for conversion and will not know rule 12.1 exists
- Watch testimonials. Patient stories are not substantiation for an efficacy claim, however genuine they are
- Raise Article 12 with brands before agreeing an endorsement
The short version
Two regimes. Products are governed by an exhaustive register with wording you must not paraphrase. Your services are governed by the CAP Code, where the question is whether you are suitably qualified and whether you can substantiate what you say.
On the second, your registration is doing more for you than you probably realise. Dietitians are frequently more timid in their marketing than the rules require, while the practitioners with the boldest claims are often the ones least entitled to make them.
This is general information about advertising rules, not legal advice. The CAP Code and the GB NHC Register are both updated. Check the current position, and consider CAP's free Copy Advice service before publishing anything you are unsure about.
Sources: GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register · ASA/CAP, health therapies and references to medical conditions · ASA/CAP, nutritional therapy
Related: Can I call myself a nutritionist without a degree? · Can I sell meal plans as a digital product? · Is my practice VAT exempt?
