Health claims regulation and botanical food supplements

Abstract

Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 has been adopted at a European level to ensure consumers have access to truthful and scientifically correct information on the nutritional properties of foods and/or their health effects. The implementation of this regulation is, however, providing results that are not always consistent with the criteria underlying such an important legal instrument and its initial objectives. When applied to food supplements and other food products intended to exert health-related benefits, Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 and its subsequent modifications and integrations pose two main, still largely unresolved, problems. The first one is structural and depends on the commercial nature of food supplements and related products, which, unlike ordinary food, are marketed for their nutritional or physiological properties (i.e., ability to induce health benefits). The second one is more contingent and is mainly due to a lack of proportionality between the efficacy assessment approaches currently adopted for vitamins and minerals vs. those applied to other products such as botanicals and probiotics. An in-depth consideration of the above-mentioned problems is needed in order to find an approach fully consistent with the inspiring principles and objectives of such a regulation, and able to overcome the current limitations in its implementation to food supplements.