Functional Foods
Background and Objective
Specific components of the diet can bring benefits beyond those of basic nutrition. These beneficial effects are communicated to consumers via health claims on food products label. The Functional Foods Task Force develops tools for the scientific substantiation of benefits of foods on health and wellness.
Impact
The European Commission funded projects FUFOSE and PASSCLAIM, coordinated by ILSI Europe, reached a consensus on scientific definitions and concepts of functional foods in Europe which were taken into considerations within the European Regulation on Health Claims implemented in 2006.
Following the first evaluation of health claims dossiers by EFSA, the task force looked into the quality of published results of human intervention studies and produced “guidelines on designing, conducting and reporting human intervention studies for the substantiation of health claims”. Its current work on criteria for validation of markers will be of use to all stakeholders.
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