AN ANOMALY in EU regulations allows celebrities to endorse and make health claims about particular foods but prevents nutritionists who have more knowledge of products from doing the same, a conference heard yesterday.
Dr Mary Flynn, chief specialist in public health nutrition with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), said it was “odd” that we could watch people like golfer Pádraig Harrington “taking the cholesterol challenge” while people with a PhD in nutrition could not do likewise.
“It means that you can have sports people who know nothing about nutrition saying I use this and whatever but no professional dietician or nutritionist or doctor is allowed say this will be good for you or not,” she said.
She was speaking at a conference in Dublin yesterday on health claims on foods and food supplements hosted by the FSAI.
Delegates heard some 38 claims about the health benefits of various foods marketed across Europe will have to come off product labels by the end of next month.
This is as a result of a detailed assessment of the scientific evidence to back up the claims, carried out initially by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and adjudicated on by it in 2008, and more recently channelled through the European Commission.
Any party wishing to make a health claim about a particular product had to submit an application to the EFSA under EU regulations. The EFSA received more than 44,000 claims for assessment with over 300 of them from Ireland. It hopes to have all adjudicated on by the end of next year.
Of those rejected so far two came from the National Dairy Council. It submitted an application to be allowed state three portions of dairy food every day as part of a balanced diet may help promote a healthy body weight during childhood and adolescence and that dairy foods (milk and cheese) promote dental health in children. Any product which might bear such claims on their labels had to be taken off the market earlier this month.
The National Dairy Council said its application was rejected because to get a claim approved it has to be matched to a particular product but it had cited dairy products in general. Also, guidelines on what information applications should contain were not issued.
To date 40 claims have been approved for use in the EU. These include claims that plant sterols have been shown to reduce cholesterol and that calcium and vitamin D are needed for growth and development of bone in children.