The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s stringent rules with food health claim approval have become a standard on which to base approvals. Until early 2014, Europe has only approved 254 health claims out of a total 2,242.
Japan is another story altogether. The country’s FOSHU system approved over 1,100 health claims by early 2014. This is due to the fact that Japan is less strict in its requirements for a health claim to be approved.
Probiotics, for example, have made many claims which were rejected in Europe due to a lack of clinical evidence, yet were approved as a functional food in Japan.
According to Ronan Stafford, an analyst for Canadean, probiotic health claims should be gaining approval more frequently in the future. “Clinical trial evidence has lagged EFSA’s approvals process by six to 10 years, so within the next five years we should see more definitive outcomes on a range of ingredients.”
While the U.S. has the largest number of functional food and beverage consumers in the world, demand is growing in regions such as China, India and Brazil. These regions will begin to have an influence over the channel in the future.
