Functional food in Europe

There is no getting around it: functional foods are here to stay. Foods with health benefits will continue to be part of a new wave of product launches far into the next century. Many in the food industry believed that functional foods were a fad confined to Japan. Now the food industry is realizing the importance of this segment.

David Potter, of management and engineering consultants PA Foods, has helped a number of companies develop positive nutrition foods, as he calls them. "In the end, the big players are recognizing that positive nutrition is the future. All of the pharmaceutical companies in the US have a nutraceutical department and roughly half of the food companies," he said. But it is far more complex to create and market a food with perceived or claimed health benefits than an ordinary new product, which is complicated enough.

One of the minefields involved is regulation. Ironically, there is no specific European legislation on these products, but existing laws on misleading claims and food safety are enforced. One unfortunate case earlier this year was that of Danish dairy company MD Foods, which launched Gaio, an innovative functional dairy product, in 1995.

Gaio was withdrawn from the UK market in January following a year and a half of controversy (it is still available in Denmark). Despite clearance from the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food's Novel Foods Committee, a consumer organization complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the product's claims, and the complaint was upheld. Gaio's marketers claimed that, based on tests conducted at Aarhus University Hospital, the Causido culture incorporated into the formulation "can help reduce cholesterol." This claim was judged to be exaggerated and misleading.

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