Dispatches from FIE 2011

Cranberry giant aims to settle debilitating PACs debate in “6-12 months”

By Shane Starling in Paris

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Cranberry

Ocean Spray has waded out of its Massachusetts cranberry bogs and into the fiery and divisive debate about accurately measuring the berry’s health benefit-delivering proanthocyanidins (PACs) – a longstanding tete-a-tete it says it can end once for all in "6-12 months".

Speaking with NutraIngredients yesterday at Food Ingredients Europe in Paris, senior manager, Tom Jones, explained how its collaboration with Complete Phytochemical Solutions seeks to develop the DMAC PACs measurement method to the point where it will become the undeniable industry standard.
Jones spoke of how PACs measurement ambiguity has braked new product development for the urinary tract infection (UTI)-benefitting berry-based products and extracts for too long, and how it felt compelled to act after learning of Complete Phytochemical Solutions' methods.
The other method that isfavoured by some suppliers is known as the European Pharmacopeia method.

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1 comment

Stay in your cranberry bogs : Ocean Spray's reckless statements

Posted by Gunter Haesaerts , Pharmatoka,

Instead of wading out of their bogs and publishing a reckless and unfounded story, Ocean Spray should have stayed in their bogs until the BL-DMAC/PAC standard issue is clarified and validated. Pharmatoka encourages the brilliant scientific work done by CompSol but instead of 6-12 months, a new PAC-standard will take at least 2-3 years before being used operationally and furthermore, the BL-DMAC method is still far from being an official method ( i.e. AOAC, ICH validated ).
France is the only country where cranberry UTI health claims have been obtained by Pharmatoka. 36mg PAC measured by the BL-DMAC/A2 method are a prerequisite. A new standard will modify the relative value of the PAC reading which could have far-reaching negative consequences for the nutraceutical industry. This press release is absolutely premature and can only be considered as a marketing manoeuver that will again lead to questions and unrest in the nutraceutical markets that stabilised after the publication of the BL-DMAC/A2 PAC quantitation method in 2010. But perhaps this was the objective.

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