Assessment of the Impact of Scientific Reports Published by EFSA and GIS on Functional Foods Newly Placed on the Market in Poland

Abstract

Dietary supplements are health-promoting products. The legal categorization of dietary supplements as foods does not raise concerns, but a general understanding of how they work in the human body seems to deviate from the official definition. Thus, it is necessary to establish effective methods of market control related to dietary supplements. This research aims at assessing the impact of recommendations by various food safety authorities on ingredients used in newly registered products. It probes how the proportions of utilized product ingredients were modified after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and Chief Sanitary Inspector in Poland (GIS) published their recommendations. Research data on the composition of products comes from the Polish national register of dietary supplements and covers the period from 2012 to 28 November 2021. Note that 103,102 products were analysed for the presence of thirty-seven ingredients, and the joinpoint regression method was applied to assess changing trends related to the use of ingredients. As our research points out, most often, changes in the trend appeared in product ingredients for which the European Food Safety Authority and Chief Sanitary Inspector in Poland issued the recommendation of having the safest level of consumption. However, these changes seem to emerge randomly and should not be unquestionably considered as the result of the published recommendations.

Comparison between the American and the European Systems of Monitoring Adverse Effects of Dietary Supplements and Their Usefulness on the Polish Market

“…Monitoring of the use of supplements seems to be particularly important in those countries where no authorisation procedures are required before the product is placed on the market [44]. In most European Union countries, notification systems for dietary supplements are in place, but only a few include authorisation procedures based on quality assessment before product release [36]. Following the example of France, some EU countries implemented their own, national dietary supplements adverse effects reporting systems [45], However, many still have no procedures for monitoring or collecting dietary supplements' adverse reactions.…”

“…In contrast, in Poland and France, companies placing dietary supplements on the market should notify the local food safety authority [36], while in the USA, a notification procedure is not established for regular products [24]. Regardless of this difference, it should be noted that in all countries of which ADEs reporting systems were included in this study, food companies do not need to obtain authorisation for dietary supplement marketing.…”

Dietary Supplements Questioned in the Polish Notification Procedure upon the Basis of Data from the National Register of Functional Foods and the European System of the RASFF

“…It may mean that, regardless of the simple and cost-free procedure of notification, entrepreneurs fail to comply with the duty of submitting the notification of trading in dietary supplements. Such a hypothesis is backed up by the presence of a large number of submissions in the RASFF relevant to the presence of yohimbine, regardless of a noticeable fall in notification submissions for products containing it observed since the beginning of 2019 [11]. Under the RASFF, it was also found that there are typically medicinal substances that cannot be entered into a notification form.…”

“…Our earlier research led to the conclusion that the national register of functional foods, such as the RASFF, may be a valuable source of information in the process of the selfregulation of the market of dietary supplements in Poland; nevertheless, further research in relation to particular ingredients is worth undertaking. An analysis in that direction may help to identify dishonest market practices resorted to by the producers and distributors of non-conforming products [11]. This is of particular significance as we are observing an increase in dishonest market practices, the purpose of which is to generate more profits from the sale of fraudulent dietary supplements or misleadingly advertised [12] while their effective detection causes many difficulties, caused, among others, by lack of data on newly launched products on the market [13].…”