Health Risks and Adverse Reactions to Functional Foods

Abstract

Functional foods have become increasingly popular with consumers anxious to mitigate the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle or aging. In spite of attractive health claims, these products do not have legal or regulatory status in most countries and are regulated through their health claims. Regulation of functional foods by health claims does not address health risks and adverse effects of these products. In this essay regulatory aspects of functional foods are reviewed along with adverse effects published in the peer-reviewed literature. We detail why the lack of an internationally accepted definition of functional foods places consumers at risk of adverse outcomes. Our review will assist regulatory agencies, manufacturers and consumer groups to assess the benefits and reduce the risks associated with these products.

Keywords:

• Functional foods
• food allergy
• hyperallergenic foods
• food regulation
• food labels

AUTHORS CONTRIBUTIONS

RA—conceived the idea of the adverse reactions to functional foods and wrote the first draft

CC—Is nutrition scientist.

GS—contributed to the work of Codex

S-TW—Performed the laboratory work for hyperallergenic functional foods discussed in this article.

Authors have not declared a conflict of interest.

FUNDING

We have received unrestricted educational grants from Fonterra, Nutricia, Allergy New Zealand, ASCIA and the A+ Hospital Trust. We thank our funders for ongoing support.