Only a fraction of the health claims food manufacturers hope to see authorised for use in Europe in 2010 are likely to get the green light from regulators, legal experts at Coca-Cola and Unilever have predicted.

Claims about weight management were particularly unlikely to succeed, with research in this field dogged by errors, faulty design and poor or inappropriate controls, claimed Unilever senior scientist David Mela. " People are comparing carbohydrate with protein, or the product tested is not representative of the product that will be marketed, whether in terms of dose, or the food matrix.

"Likewise, there is often no evidence that they have proved it still works after processing and storage."

Meanwhile, in vitro and animal data that did "not in any way prove the efficacy" of ingredients on humans was widely quoted in marketing materials, he said.

His concerns were echoed by Coca-Cola Europe regulatory and scientific affairs manager Dr Michele Kellerhals, who said that the chances of positive approvals for many of the claims submitted about cognition and skin health were equally slim.

"There is a vast body of literature and a lot of consensus about cardiovascular health, but once you start looking at many other areas, the numbers of studies get substantially smaller."