Are dietary supplements food

Judging from the definitions of my country's current "Food Safety Law" and the global mainstream regulatory system, dietary supplements do belong to the category of food and belong to the category of special foods. However, this classification has always been ambiguous and controversial in the industry and supervision.

Most of the compliant dietary supplements sold through regular channels in China are printed with the "Blue Hat" logo and belong to the health food category. The regulatory requirements follow the same safety bottom line as ordinary foods. They must not claim to have disease treatment functions, and all added ingredients must also be in the list of food raw materials allowed by the state. Take the lutein gummies and multivitamin tablets that everyone often buys. Even if they are made into compressed tablets or capsules similar to medicines, they are still food in nature and can only be used to fill the nutritional gap in the daily diet. They cannot be taken as cold medicine, eye protection medicine or even chronic disease treatment medicine.

However, this classification is not entirely without controversy. After all, the nutritional concentration of dietary supplements is usually much higher than that of ordinary foods. The vitamin C content of ordinary fresh oranges is only a few tens of milligrams per 100 grams. The vitamin C content of many dietary supplements can reach hundreds or even thousands of milligrams in a single tablet. There are also some products that add highly active plant extracts, and the efficacy boundaries are inherently blurred. My friend who worked in food compliance also complained that last year, an imported high-dose Coenzyme Q10 was stuck in the declaration process. Its active ingredient content has reached the medicinal dosage for clinical auxiliary treatment of cardiovascular problems. According to domestic standards, it cannot be approved as an ordinary dietary supplement. In the end, brands must either reduce the content and apply for food declaration, or they must spend several years to go through the clinical trial process of drugs, which is a dilemma.

To put it bluntly, in fact, dietary supplements are like "functional specialty students" in the food industry. They have clear targeted nutritional supplement effects, but they never meet the qualification threshold of drugs. If you encounter someone selling you that a certain supplement can cure diseases, no matter how hyped it is, it is either false propaganda or it is an illegal product that has not been registered. Don't believe it.