FSAI warning: Stricter controls on whether certain foods live up to their health-enhancing claims are on the way, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has warned.
These foods, known as functional foods, tap into the growing health awareness of consumers and are big business.The market is currently worth about €100 million a year and growing at around 20 per cent per annum. The foods include products such as probiotic yoghurts.
"Food labels cannot refer to the prevention or potential cure of a disease and this would effectively place them in the category of medicines, regulated by the Irish Medicines Board," Dr Pat O'Mahony, chief specialist in biotechnology at the FSAI, said yesterday.
Forthcoming EU legislation would make it more difficult for food manufacturers to make unverified nutritional and health claims about foods such as probiotic yoghurt drinks, he said.
Dr O'Mahony said the forthcoming EU regulation on nutrition and health claims would standardise what health claims could be made and the evidence required to substantiate those health claims across all member states.
"The European Safety Authority will then have a bigger part to play in adjudicating whether health food claims are justified or not," said Dr O'Mahony.
Many probiotic foods currently on the market had not presented the scientific evidence backing up their health-enhancing claims to the FSAI, he said. "Many manufacturers don't realise that we must see the evidence. It's illegal to mislead the consumer with claims that haven't been backed up by scientific evidence," he said.
According to Dr O'Mahony, the FSAI plans to investigate the health claims of current products and make companies aware that they must present the FSAI with such information about new products.
Dr O'Mahony was speaking in advance of today's FSAI publication of an information leaflet on functional foods for the food industry.
The concept of functional foods was developed in Japan in the mid-1980s. While a globally accepted definition has yet to be agreed, functional foods are foods with an added health benefit following the addition or
concentration of a beneficial ingredient or the removal or substitution of an ineffective or
harmful ingredient.
Functional foods include those with added cholesterol-lowering plant sterols and stanols, probiotics and other blood-pressure lowering and immune system enhancing products.
A spokeswoman for Glanbia Foods, one of the largest producers of functional foods in Ireland, said all its functional foods had been reviewed and passed by the FSAI.
"We're mindful of giving open information to consumers and that consumers require more assurances. We work closely with the FSAI to ensure all claims are valid and scientifically proven," said Geraldine Kearney, director of corporate communications at Glanbia.
Dr O'Mahony said he expected companies to co-operate with the FSAI regarding requests for scientific evidence. "Otherwise, they could do irreparable damage to functional foods in general and they will want to protect the industry," he said.
