One day conference on the subject ‘Nutraceutical Regulating for Growth’ was recently organised by NuFFoods Spectrum, supported by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
First session on ‘Nutra Self-Regulations; by Whom, for Whom’ was moderated by Anil Kumar, Advisor (Standards), FSSAI. Other speakers were Indranil Chatterjee, Regional Product Line Manager-Protein Solutions, South & South East Asia, DuPoint Nutrition & Health, Manjiri Chunekar, Managing Director, GrassRoot Nutrition Private Limited, Sameer Maheshwari, CEO, Healthkart.
Anil Kumar said, “We have recently issued the regulation on non-specified foods or product approval scheme. Supreme Court wanted us to run the product-approval scheme through a regulation and not through a advisory which we were doing earlier. So the regulation has been issued on 11th of September last month and few days back we have also issued the guidelines. We are expecting some FBOs out of previous 2900 FBOs who were not covered our existing nutraceutical guidelines to come to us for product approval.”
While giving his views, Indranil Chatterjee said, “Nutraceutical regulations which is going to be affected from January 1stwith certain amendments and certain things which came out a year back. I am sure FSSAI has given enough time to manufacturers or marketer to change the products based on recommendations and new standards.”
He also added, “Nutraceuticals is all about science because you sell the product with some scientific claims and you need to know that whatever you sell in the market should have the proven efficacy and not the false claims. If you need to do some clinical trials for that, please do that but make sure the product you are selling is correct.”
Further giving her opinions about the regulations, Manjiri Chunekar said, “Unhealthy Foods should also have a category just like healthy foods. Warnings like ‘over-consumption is bad’ can be used on some products. All food products can be classified according to grades or color coding. Grade one being the most acceptable/nutritionally correct, no added sugar, low on fat and safe when consumed in excess. Grade two indicating still good, added preservatives but nutritionally good. Grade three indicating high in fats and sugar as well as salt and ‘consumption in low quantity is recommended’ and grade four foods can be categorised under ‘Occasional indulgence foods’.
Sameer Maheshwari said, “Recognition of some of the food products is important. From E-commerce perspective, regulations are fine but still there are some grey areas.”