Health claims: How do we define ‘healthy’?

This content item was originally published on www.nutraingredients.com, a William Reed online publication.

By Stephen Daniells

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Nutrition

With ‘healthy’ populations identified as the ideal for the European Food Safety Authority’s health claims, NutraIngredients asks Yakult – what exactly is healthy?

The word 'healthy' has major implications for the European health claims legislation - studies must support the efficacy of an ingredient or product in a healthy population, if that is the intended use.

Stephen Daniells talks to Dr Jia Zhao from Yakult Europe about the meaning of such a simple word – what is healthy and how do we define it? Dr Zhao explains that more needs to be done on understanding the word – sports people are very healthy, for example, but excessive training suppresses their immune systems, she says. We still think of them as healthy.

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