Supplement manufacturers call for broader evidence for health claims

Health claims cannot purely be based on evidence from human intervention studies as proposed in the latest draft recommendations from an international standards body, a food supplements organisation has claimed.

The International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA) issued the warning. It came as the nutrition committee on the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international standards body, prepares next month to discuss its draft recommendations on the scientific basis of health claims.

IADSA claimed many of the original health claims were based on observational studies and epidemiological studies of factors that affect health and illness in populations.

“We agree [the recommendations are] moving in the right direction. But the text still needs to be amended to allow evidence from human experimental and observational studies to form the basis of health claims, including reduction of disease risk claims,” said David Pineda, IADSA’s director of regulatory affairs.

Professor David Richardson, scientific adviser to the UK Council for Responsible Nutrition and IADSA, supported this view: “Scientific substantiation should take into account the totality of the available data and involve a weighing of evidence.

“Human studies are given more weight than animal, in vitro and observational studies. But it is important for the Codex text to show that a health claim can be substantiated on a case-by-case basis by a number of different evidence sources.”

Richardson added that Codex should consider evidence from history of use or traditional use and that health claims should be re-evaluated if and when evidence challenges a claim’s scientific validity.

“It is imperative that the use of health claims on foods and food components does not stifle academic research and product innovation,” he said. “To evaluate any diet and health relationship, it is essential for the claim to reflect emerging as well as consensus science.”