Through advances in clinical trial design, analytical methodologies for assessing the nature and level of the bioactive constituents, and establishment of processes for systematic assessment of available literature, health claims on foods are becoming increasingly recognized as important and consequently are being legally regulated in more and more countries around the world. Legislation pioneered largely in Japan began to emerge in the 1980s to bring some systematization to the issue of how much data are required to substantiate a claim for a given dietary agent in order to improve a function and/or modify physiological processes in a manner consistent with the attenuation of disease risk. Various jurisdictions around the globe have now developed series of systematic approaches for reviewing scientific data and ascribing linkages between dietary ingredients and disease risk reduction, as well as performance and well-being, with the common objectives of identifying the threshold of scientific evidence needed to substantiate an authoritative statement to the general public in the form of a label claim for a given marketed food product. This process of systematic assessment of scientific evidence linking functional ingredients to health through the use of health claims on foods possesses potential benefits for several stakeholders. First, the individual consumer profits from guidance on which foods and food ingredients possess the potential to reduce risk of degenerative disease, improve longevity, and reduce dependence on pharmaceuticals. Second, health care service providers enjoy reduced operating costs resulting from a healthier population with reduced requirements for drugs. Third, corporations profit from improved market share, subsequent to increased appeal and penetration of products bearing health claims within the food marketplace. Fourth, food producers profit from higher commodity prices obtained from food constituents with added health value. Last, research activity in the agriculture-food-health continuum ensures continued livelihood and activity of scientists and technologists, thus improving food-related bioproducts. As a result, this supplement, which captures the proceedings of a symposium held at the Canadian Nutrition Congress meeting in Winnipeg, Canada, June 21, 2007, endeavors to achieve 2 objectives. In the first part, Global Assessment of Health Claims Frameworks, a cross-jurisdictional review is undertaken, profiling the history and current state of the art regarding legislative and scientific processes for establishment of health claims on foods. The second part, Evidence-Based Review of Health Claims on Bioactives in Foods, gives examples of how specific functional ingredients have dealt with complex science issues that need to be addressed for the establishment of health claims.