Europe puts health claims to the test

Abstract

The emergence of so-called functional foods--foods that have been modified to promote better health in one way or another--has done wonders for food company balance sheets over the past 20 years. Probiotic dairy products are a prime example. Starting in the 1990s with Yakult, a bacteria-enriched yogurt drink made by a Japanese company of the same name, sales of such products took off along with that of others, such as French food group Danone's probiotic product, labelled Activia. By launching such products, companies were anticipating consumer trends. As Sue Davies, chief policy adviser at Which? a not-for-profit consumers' organization based in the United Kingdom, puts it: People embraced food products offering health benefits because there's a natural tendency to go for the quick fix rather than cut down on saturated fat, sugar or salt, or eat more fruits and vegetables. Fast forward to today and you can't walk down the aisle of a supermarket in any developed country without seeing ads touting the benefits of additives, such as omega-3s/DHA, lycopene or antioxidants. Even sugar-packed fizzy drinks proclaim their electrolytic value and call themselves sports drinks. But does adding vitamins to sugar water make it any healthier? And what about adding extra bacteria in yogurt? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Back in 2004, monthly journal Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin asked that very question and came to the conclusion that the evidence that probiotics improved intestinal flora was patchy, while the broader claim that such products increased consumers' well-being and helped them fight allergies was unreliable. Drinking lots of Activia didn't make much difference to a healthy person, they found, although it did not have any harmful effects. But that didn't mean, of course, that other products that proclaim healthy properties couldn't have harmful effects. Adding vitamins to a sweet doesn't make the sweet healthier, says Dr Francesco Branca, director of WHO's department of Nutrition and Health Development, adding that if the addition of vitamins encourages people to overindulge in sweets it can be said to be harmful. It is this issue of whether such products mislead people into unhealthy choices that is at the heart of the European Union's regulation No. 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims, which became applicable in July of 2007 and is only now starting to deliver results. the words of Davies: Prior to 2007 there wasn't enough control in the EU to ensure that health claims actually promoted healthier choices rather than undermining some of the healthy eating advice that was given by independent nutritionists and government authorities. The idea behind the legislation is that claims made in relation to health benefits need to be backed by scientific evidence. The body that decides whether such claims are indeed backed by credible data is the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which provides scientific advice to the European Commission. July 2008 the Commission asked EFSA to prepare a scientific opinion on health claims that were permissible in the European Union and provided EFSA with a draft list containing 4185 entries that had been boiled down from the 44 000 claims supplied by the Member States. To date EFSA has asked for clarifications on more than half of the draft list, and in the words of Branca, the authority is drowning in paper. Part of the problem is the indigestible nature of the inputs it is trying to assess. Says Branca: In some cases you only have incomplete information as the potential effects have been obtained under experimental circumstances. But then the dose might vary, the compound might vary, and the circumstances of absorption might vary. It will be difficult to evaluate the complexities of the interactions in real diet situations. Based on the new regulation, EFSA says it approved the first batch of opinions on Article 13 health claims in July and that it will be releasing opinions on 1024 health claims by September this year. …