Nutrient science is not black and white, says CRN

11-Mar-2010 - The Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority have similar criteria in place when it comes to evaluating health claim-backing evidence – both prefer human intervention trials.

Martek reaps regulatory omega-3 benefits

10-Mar-2010 - DHA omega-3 is one of the few ingredients to benefit from the European Union nutrition and health claims process so far, and Martek's VP of regulatory affairs, Rodney Gray, looks at developments in other regulatory changes that have affected the sector.

Mathioudakis solves the case of the “missing claims”

09-Mar-2010 - Basil Mathioudakis, the Head of the European Commission unit on Food Law, Nutrition and Labelling tells Shane Starling how it came to be that a whole batch of European Union health claims somehow got lost in the system.

‘We’ve had enough of EFSA’, says fed-up global probiotics group

05-Mar-2010 - After months of silence the director general of the International Probiotics Association (IPA) has delivered a scathing attack on the European Food Safety Authority’s “flawed” health claim assessment methods.

EFSA health claim opinion

Meal replacements win first EFSA weight management claim approval

04-Mar-2010 - Significant effects, study products that matched those on-market and biologically plausible mechanisms were cited by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as the major reasons why meal replacements won a rare article 13.1 positive opinion last week.

Kemin and DSM commit to article 13.5 lutein submission

03-Mar-2010 - Leading lutein suppler Kemin Health will resubmit a lutein dossier under article 13.5 of the European Union nutrition and health claims regulation, after EFSA last week rejected an article 13.1 lutein-eye health submission.

EC can balance EFSA’s mass antioxidant rejection: ERNA

02-Mar-2010 - The European Food Safety Authority’s mass rejection of antioxidant foods and constituents including prunes, bananas, resveratrol, pomegranate and pine bark extract will provide an interesting test of the European Commission’s risk management role, the European Responsible Nutrition Alliance (ERNA) has said.

Low-GI health claims are ‘down, but not out’

02-Mar-2010 - While low-glycaemic index (low-GI) health claims have suffered a major setback following last week’s negative opinion from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), it is “by no means the end of the road” for glycaemic control, according to experts in the field.

Kellogg's seeks cereal weight claim approval under article 13.5

02-Mar-2010 - Kellogg’s has submitted an application to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for approval of a weight health relationship claim under the proprietary and emerging science article 13.5 for generic ready- to-eat breakfast cereals.

‘Huge discrepancies’ between herbal and vitamin health claim requirements: Consultant

01-Mar-2010 - The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is applying one standard of evidence for herbal products and another for vitamins and minerals in assessing health claim data, according to French consultancy, NutraVeris.

EU Commissioner urged to make claims regulation 'a win-win' for all

01-Mar-2010 - Using article 13.5, the proprietary and emerging science route, for article 13.1 claims revision would seem to fly in the face of the goal of EU health claims regulation, which was to have claim substantiation by generally accepted scientific evidence, and proves a review of legislation implementation is critical, argues consultants PA Europe.

Batch two fall-out: Goodbye article 13.1, hello article 13.5

26-Feb-2010 - Article 13.1 health claims are being rejigged and resubmitted under the proprietary and emerging science, article 13.5, after EFSA rejected all but a few submissions in its second batch of 416 claim opinions yesterday.

EFSA mass rejects probiotics and antioxidants as article 13.1 batch two published

25-Feb-2010 - The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued negative opinions to ‘most’ of 416 health claim dossiers including submissions linking health benefits to vitamin D, probiotics, green tea, black tea, lutein, beta glucans, meso-zeaxanthin, alpha-lipoic acid and melatonin.

EFSA to hold May health claims summit

25-Feb-2010 - The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) will host a May summit at its Italian headquarters that will provide a rare opportunity for direct dialogue between stakeholders and the agency’s health claims panel.

EFSA: healthy population extrapolation possible if data backs it

24-Feb-2010 - Trial results gained from targeted populations such as those with disease can be extrapolated into normal populations to back health claims, the head of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) health claims panel said in Brussels yesterday.

EFSA chief: many dossiers in new batch of article 13.1 opinions "insufficient"

24-Feb-2010 - The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) executive director, Catherine Geslain- Lanéelle, has told the Nutrition and Lifestyle conference in Brussels this morning that many of Thursday’s article 13.1 opinions have "insufficient evidence".

Lack of established risk factors hampers research: Cantox

24-Feb-2010 - Cantox Health Science International’s Canadian-based, Food and Nutrition associate director, Kathy Musa-Velosa PhD, tells Shane Starling about how risk factors and biomarkers are being used as measures for disease reduction health claims.

Special edition: Antioxidants

Regulation: inching beyond implied health claims

23-Feb-2010 - In the final instalment in this series about antioxidants, NutraIngredients scans the regulatory landscape to see how the science backing the nutrient is being translated into law.

Weekly comment

Banning energy drinks is a doomed shot in the dark

22-Feb-2010 - Energy shot drinks have come under fire from German authorities which are employing an old-school prohibition logic that history has repeatedly dunce-hatted.

EU weight management and sports claims under threat: consultant

18-Feb-2010 - Nutrition claims such as low-GI that have not made it onto official annex of the 2006 nutrition and health claims regulation (NHCR) register have technically been illegal since January 19 and could be prosecuted, according to a UK-based consultant.

Ginkgo, ginseng, bilberry claims pulled in UK

17-Feb-2010 - The voluntary UK advertising watchdog has pulled up two Guernsey-based supplements manufacturers for making unsubstantiated claims about a host of mostly herbal products including ginkgo, ginseng, bilberry, St Johns Wort, milk thistle, valerian, soy isoflavones and black cohosh.

Special edition: Antioxidants

Overview: The (seemingly) unstoppable antioxidant powerhouse

16-Feb-2010 - In the first instalment of this antioxidants special NutraIngredients scans a diverse global market that has barely been dented by the recession and continues to flourish amid consumer understanding that is often little more than surface deep.

Glucosamine joint health opinion questioned by EC committee

15-Feb-2010 - At least one European Union member state has queried a recent reduced cartilage degeneration article 14 health claim submission that was turned down by EFSA partially because the studies submitted were not conducted on healthy populations.

Danone resubmits Actimel probiotic immunity health claim

10-Feb-2010 - Ten months after it withdrew its marquee probiotic submissions from the European Union health claims process for reconfiguring, Danone has fully re-entered the game by lodging a tweaked dossier for its drinking yoghurt, Actimel.