SI endorses strict food label health claims
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has proposed guidelines for the evidence it will require to authorize food label health claims. The Salt Institute has written in support of the proposal, specifically "strongly urging" that the final guidelines retain three "core principles" in the draft proposal: first, that applications employ a strong "evidence- based" objective review of the medical literature; second, that claims be allowed only for the general population, not sensitive sub-groups; and third, that the claimed benefit be a "human health outcome" and not an intermediate risk factor such as blood pressure.
The Institute "saluted" EFSA for its pledge to base health claims on a systematic review of the evidence and urged the draft be further strengthened "to embrace explicitly the systematic review procedures of the Cochrane Collaboration whereby all evidence meeting pre-established quality-related standards is required to be included in the analysis."
The Institute also commended the draft's "explicit recognition that health claims be made only for foods shown to produce improved human 'health outcomes'. Too often have health claims been authorized for health conditions which are only intermediate variables affecting health outcomes. Hard outcomes like mortality or, at least, incidence of a medical event such as a stroke or heart attack, are the proper target, not such intermediate 'risk factors' as insulin resistance, blood pressure, plasma renin activity or other variables affecting the final health outcome (e.g. a heart attack)."
The proposal should be amended to address two concerns, advised the Institute. "The final Guidelines should not permit health claims for individual risk factors for a disease; they should be authorized when evidence shows that the net health outcome effect is positive," the Institute explained. "An intervention often affects multiple risk factors and the same intervention can increase some risks even while reducing others. It is the net effect of the intervention that should be the subject of the health claim." The Institute also argued against any "grandfathering" of previous health claims: "Advent of these new rules should supersede these older claims since EFSA's newer, higher standard should be pre-emptive."
Comments will be accepted until June 17.
