ISCHOM: Nutrition Health Claims on Antioxidants and CHOCOLATE

Barcelona 2015

2.3. Current Status of Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe with a Focus on Antioxidants and Chocolate

Verhagen, H.

Functional foods are closely associated with claims on foods. There are two categories of claims on foods: nutritional claims and health claims. In the European Union, health claims on (functional) foods and food supplements must be scientifically substantiated. In December 2006, the European Union published its Regulation 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods
(http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2007/l_012/l_01220070118en00030018.pdf).

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) provides scientific advice to the European Commission for health claims submitted under Regulation 1924/2006. With regard to general function health claims, in Europe more than 44,000 proposals were made, from which the European Commission prepared a list of about 4600 submitted to EFSA for scientific evaluation.

Hitherto EFSA have evaluated about two-thirds of these, the large majority of which having received the judgment “a cause and effect relationship has not been established”. EFSA has published hundreds of opinions on health claims, some of which are positive, some of which are negative, and a few with insufficient evidence 
(http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/nda/ndaclaims.htm; http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/labellingnutrition/claims/index_en.htm).

Regulation No 432/2012 was published on 25 May 2012
(http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/

LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:136:0001:0040:EN:PDF). 

A list of 222 general function health claims has been approved by the Commission. For the remaining ca. 1500 claims on botanicals it is not clear if and how they will be evaluated in terms of their scientific substantiation. Now Europe has a list of authorized and non-authorized health claims (http://ec.europa.eu/nuhclaims/).

With regard to antioxidants/oxidative damage (search “oxidat”), EFSA has evaluated almost 200 health claims: a cause and effect relationship was found established and authorized for only eight health claims (vitamins C, E and B2; the minerals copper, manganese, zinc and selenium; olive oil polyphenols standardized by hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives). Regarding “cocoa” and “chocolate”, a total of 12 generic (article 13.1) health claims were found to be not scientifically substantiated and hence were not authorized, but two (article 13.5) health claims on “cocoa flavanols” were found to be scientifically substantiated and subsequently authorized.

Starting 14 December 2012, all claims that are not authorized or on hold/under consideration are prohibited.