Are product claims true?

The European Food Safety Authority is doing consumers a great service by evaluating the health claims of thousands of food products, writes CONOR POPE

OVER THE last decade so many foods have promised to heighten our brain function, lower our cholesterol, raise our fibre levels, flush our arteries clean, steady our blood pressure, boost our immunity, toughen up our bones and our teeth, and help us develop razor-sharp concentration that it’s a wonder we still need doctors.

Manufacturers of high calorie products loaded with refined sugars can slap the term “low fat” on their packaging to create a false sense of wholesomeness while something made almost entirely with artery-clogging trans-fats and salt is free to boast about its “sugar-free” status.

There are also companies which bamboozle us with talk of hair and nail enriching vitamins and while such claims may, strictly speaking, be true in the sense that certain nutrients are important for the development of hair and nails, the reality is we already have them in abundance so the extra dose, available at a hefty price, is entirely unnecessary.

The reason manufactures are so keen to enhance their products with talk of superpowers and slights of hand is that repeated studies have shown most shoppers are anxious to buy products with health benefits and will spend more to do so.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has attempted to cut through the so-called science and bogus claims to provide clarity for consumers. It is in the process of carrying out a wide ranging review of thousands of so-called functional food products to establish the credibility of the claims they make.

Following years of pressure from consumer groups, the EU passed legislation in 2006 which said that all medical-sounding marketing claims must be verified. The Parma-based authority is now seriously studying 4,000 products – 44,000 claims from manufactures were submitted as part of the process but the panel’s team of independent scientists found that there was a huge level of repetition and whittled the number down by over 90 per cent.

Once their work is done, the information which appears on all packaging will have to be backed up by rigorous science. That is not all: products which do not meet healthy requirements on fat, salt and sugar content will be forbidden from making health claims even if they are scientifically backed which should mean that the days of the “now low in salt” candyfloss are numbered.

Earlier this month, EFSA published the first part of its widely anticipated study. It examined the health claims of more than 500 food products and its early report will have made for uncomfortable reading for many food producers, particularly those who like to boast about their probiotic nature.

In a third of the products examined, the EFSA panel found claims being made by manufacturers had scientific merit – sugar-free chewing gum does help maintain dental health, products high in dietary fibres improve bowel function and ones with certain fatty acids do help maintain cholesterol at safe levels. On the other hand, it declared that taurine, an amino acid commonly found in sports drinks, does not boost energy levels; beta-carotene in sunscreen does not provide additional protection against ultraviolet rays; while glucosamine does not benefit the joints.

When it came to probiotics — creatures which, we are told, fight harmful intestinal bacteria and help the digestive process – the news wasn’t so good. Of 180 claims assessed, 10 were rejected entirely while the panel said it was not able to establish a link between the consumption of the other 170 products and improvements in health because there was not enough scientific evidence to back up the claims.

Certain products, most notably those made by Danone, the French company which has developed the most well known probiotic (L. casei immunitas), have not yet been evaluated, although that is likely to happen early next year when Danone presents its own scientific evidence to the panel.

So, is that it then? Are probiotics as good for you as a bag of magic beans? It’s not as simple as that. “You can’t throw probiotic science out,” says Dr Mary Flynn, chief specialist in public health nutrition with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

She has been heavily involved in the process, working closely with EFSA. She says the problem with the probiotic claims which were submitted was that the companies did not state precisely what strain or geneotype they were talking about, so the active ingredients in the documentation were not properly characterised. “For scientific claims about a probiotic to stand up you have to have identified the strain and have it geneotyped,” she says.

Flynn says that some of the documentation supplied by companies in support of their products came from unusual sources with at least one company citing the Bible in its research documentation. And say what you like about the Bible, it is, as Flynn says, “not generally accepted as being scientific in nature”.

Nutritionist Paula Mee echoes Flynn’s generally positive comments about the benefits of probiotics but expresses concern that assembling the scientific dossiers required to prove it may be beyond many small and medium-sized companies. “There is science there to prove that probiotics work but I am not sure small companies are ever going to be in a position to do that research so we might not end up with a level playing field at the end of all this.”

Mee says that while EFSA’s rigorous assessment of foods is needed, it could create a degree of confusion over the benefits of certain food supplements. “On the one hand people are being told to take probiotics by their doctors when they are in hospital or recovering from certain illnesses and on the other they are hearing that the claims they are making about health are being rejected by EFSA. The way the information is coming out, in dribs and drabs, is not helpful.”

According to Dr Flynn: “The pendulum has swung over and back. There was a time when anyone could make a claim about the health properties of their products and maybe it’s going the other way now. But it will settle down.”

The EFSA panel’s work is only starting and thousands more “functional food” health claims will be assessed in the months ahead after which companies whose products have been rejected will be faced with the choice of changing their marketing strategies or taking certain products off the market.