FTC Takes TruHeight’s Growth Claims Down a Few Pegs

In 2023, TINA.org alerted parents to TruHeight, a supplement company that was deceptively marketing its “height growth vitamins” as clinically proven to help children and teens grow tall.

Now, the company has agreed to pay $750,000 to settle an FTC lawsuit alleging it not only made false and unsubstantiated height-based growth claims, but amplified those deceptive claims with fake reviews and AI-generated comments posted on the company’s social media accounts.

To support its height-boosting claims, the FTC alleged that TruHeight primarily relied on a single, company-sponsored study rife with a number of “substantial flaws.” The FTC noted:

Among other things, the study is of insufficient size and duration (the study measured the height growth of 32 participants over a six-month period), lacked proper randomization, failed to control for participants’ sleep and nutritional intake, and only evaluated a single TruHeight product.

All of which is to say the study fell well short of what the law requires: that health claims be backed by competent and reliable scientific evidence.

In addition to paying $750,000, TruHeight and its two cofounders, who are also named as defendants, are permanently prohibited from making any health claims, including those related to gains in height and growth, that aren’t supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence. (Meanwhile, TruHeight faces a class-action lawsuit over its growth claims.)

Since 2020, TruHeight has sold millions of dollars of products, charging $45 for a single bottle of its “growth gummies,” according to the FTC’s complaint.

This is not the first time the FTC has gone after a supplement company for making unsubstantiated claims about height increases for children. In 2006, the agency reached a $375,000 settlement with the marketer of HeightMax over false claims to make kids taller.

But the FTC’s complaint against TruHeight didn’t stop at deceptive health claims. It also alleged that until at least November 2024, TruHeight’s website contained several thousand five-star reviews that were actually written by company employees, including one that stated:

Excited to See Results: It was exciting to hear my daughter who is 13 come in and show me that she was taller. I didn’t believe it, but we checked, and yep, she’s an inch taller!

The FTC also alleged that TruHeight purchased more than 150 fake social media profiles that used AI chatbots like ChatGPT to generate and post comments on its Facebook and Instagram pages. The complaint cited an email one of the cofounders sent a third-party contractor expressing concerns that “the bots are not sounding or looking like real people [and] they are being flagged by people as bots.”

In response to a request for comment, TruHeight said it “worked cooperatively with the FTC” and “reached a voluntary settlement,” adding that it “understand[s] the FTC’s expectations and remain[s] committed to ground our product claims in scientific research related to nutrition, bone health, and development.” The company noted difficulties conducting scientific research on children and teens due to variables like diet, exercise and sleep that it said “cannot be closely monitored.”

But the law is the law. And as TruHeight found out, if the FTC discovers you broke it, there’s a price to pay.

Find more of our coverage on ads targeting parents and kids.