General Principles on Flexibility of Wording for Health Claims on Foods

United Kingdom

In December 2012 certain recommendations were agreed between 17 Member States (including the UK) for general principles about the flexibility of wording for health claims under Regulation 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods. It should be noted that these are recommendations only and authorities in certain member states may have developed more detailed national recommendations.

The terms and conditions of the EU Register of nutrition and health claims explain that some flexibility of wording is possible provided that the aim is to help consumer understanding, taking into account factors such as linguistic and cultural variations and the target population.

An overall recommendation is that food businesses should stick as closely as possible to the authorised wording of health claims.

Full details of the further recommended ‘General Principles’ may be found here.

An outline summary of these is as follows:

Recommendations

  1. To ensure that adapted wording has the same meaning to the consumer as authorised wording i.e. not adapted so that it may be interpreted as ‘stronger’ than the authorised claim nor be misleading. It must still reflect the scientific evidence from which the authorised claim was substantiated.
  2. Use of the term ‘normal’ – where this word is referred to in an authorised claim it should not be replaced by another term or removed. However, in some European languages words such as ‘healthy’ or ‘proper’ are used instead. If any adapted wording is used the key principle governing this is that it must have the same meaning to the consumer and demonstrate the same health relationship.
  3. Link between the claimed effect and the nutrient, substance, food or food category responsible for the effect should be specific – i.e. the claim in respect of a certain ingredient should be specific to that ingredient and not extend to the product that contains it. Where a food product contains two constituents for which there are authorised claims, food businesses must take care not to make the claims misleading.
  4. Particular considerations for health claims about food supplements – care must be given not to combine categories of nutrients or substances when referring to health claims that might mislead as to their individual properties. The context and overall presentation of a claim is very important. A decision about whether a claim is acceptable may need to be made on a case-by-case basis.
  5. Presentation of general, non-specific health claims - Article 10(3) of Regulation 1924/2006 requires that when reference is made to general, non-specific benefits of a nutrient or food for overall good health or health-related well being it must be accompanied by a specific, authorised Article 13 or Article 14 health claim.
  6. Trade mark, brand name or fancy name – the general principle set out in section 5 above would still apply if these include a general, non-specific health claim.
  7. Reference to excerpts from EFSA opinions - It may be tempting to pick sentences or phrases from an EFSA opinion in order to adapt the wording of an authorised health claim. However, this should be done with extreme caution as it could increase the risk of changing the meaning of the claim and could even mean that it could be construed as a medicinal claim.