The world market for food supplements, has played an important place in human health in the last 50 year old.
A market that has been growing sometimes somewhat disorderly, but significantly, such that some large groups of food industries and pharmaceutical-have not ceased to be very attentive to their development, doing here and there some incursion maneuvers even stagger the ground.
In the Union Europe, where an intense buzzing rules will, in many cases excessive and generating conflicts of interest and inequalities, in good time but decided the European Commission to create legal rules for a market that has always been confused himself with some enlightening descriptions and something maladapted the technical and scientific context, as for example; "Dietetic", "Natural Remedies", "Nutritional supplements and nutraceuticals", etc. A market which in Portugal always was represented from the first moments, by commonly dubbed stores herbalists, passing in a more recent period, perhaps by sociocultural status needs, many of them being called "dietetic".
Not wanting to discuss here the best designation for these shops, think that in the future should look for a more enlightening terminology, leaving however be noted that the term herbal still has some historical and sociological weight.
The policy 46/2002 that after transition to our legal system gave the ordinance 136/2003 of 28 June, revolutionized and somehow began to rule the market starting immediately by considering the marketed products as part of the large group of foodstuffs, but owing to have its own special characteristics, as for example, physiological effects on the human body, deserves special legal treatment, and therefore an original designation, the dietary supplement.
The ordinance 136/2003 considers food supplements all that the market itself have strategically developed in the last 50 year old. Vitamins, minerals and trace elements, fibers, enzymes, fatty acids, amino acids and also the plant and herbal extracts. Many other substances were however by stating, and even some of which are referred to in the preamble of the law are not properly cataloged, which in our opinion does not bring benefits to anyone, or to market players, or to the charge of reporting and surveillance authorities.
In the legislature of EU bodies, however continue the steps, towards future is cataloging all substances that may be used in food supplements. Obviously this legislative production in packages upsets with some gravity normal functioning of the market, there is always a need for more or less frequent changes formulations, of labeling and marketing strategies and marketing, changes that substantially burden the fixed and variable costs of enterprises and that ultimately translate into losses not only for these, as also for the national economy, as is evident.
The APARD - Portuguese Association of Food Supplements, has been playing a key role in all of this and managed to initially avoid the destruction of the market, by vested interests and too powerful, fighting and successively winning several court cases, this small but well equipped particularly the level of human capital, industry association, became bastion of defense of the legitimate interests of the agents of this promising market. In a second phase, laborious, exhausting and exhaustive, a A.P.A.R.D., in conjunction with its European federation, a E.H.P.M, (European Federation of Associations of Health Product Manufacturers), then began to participate in drawing up lists of substances, to catalog them and select them according to different parameters, technical and scientific, commercial and legal. This is actually a thorough job, to the extent it can be considered always incomplete.
Through many vicissitudes some technical and scientific questions arise with great frequency and accuracy, most of them relating to dubbed plants and herbal extracts, that deep concern essentially the medicinal plants.
Here arises the question of using a large number of plants that over several centuries services provided enormous public health and individual human, in products whose current legal status is that of food supplements and not drugs. Of course, for anyone dealing with the issue selflessly and only by the gauge of common sense, and why not also, according to technical and scientific criteria, this is a red herring! To prove that this is, would suffice to say that any plant before going on to be dubbed the medicinal, only is a simple vegetable. In fact the allocation of medicinal virtues to any vegetable, occurred and occurs whenever a human imposition, in most cases by empirical observation. However in almost personally would venture to say that all existing on earth plant, have in varying quantities, Because any medical. Consider vegetables, even those that are currently intensively studied the pharmacognosic view, as medicaments[1], is nothing but a fallacy, and above all an attempt to move from one market to them always served with sobriety and respect, to another that a few years ago regarded them as "remedies", "Recipes granny", or something that "neither good nor bad made".
The reductionist approach that still prevails in the current science, has contributed to some elaborate theses, but ill-founded, because starting from wrong principles and ignoring fundamental principles concerning the use of plants with beneficial effects on human health, end up presenting results and conclusions biased and displaced from reality. In fact the vast majority of studies and research concerning the substances isolated and purified from plants, through the thin organic chemistry processes, jobs that can never move so lessons for the field of use of the "vegetable Totum"[2] plant, which is used in the form of dietary supplements. Thus no pharmacological studies, much less toxicological studies of single substances, extrapolation to be valid as the use of the plant as a whole.
The use of herbal supplements, is revealed as, timely, fair and worthy of respect and attention, in particular as regards the future scientific research applied to plants used in the form of "plant Totum".
The integral or holistic herbal medicine, should not be embarrassed by switch to products, although composed of erasures, powdered or total plant extracts, now subject to designation imposed by law of dietary supplements. In the background always these were the products that same noble discipline of Naturology (unconventional medicine) used over the last 50 year old, not to mention the centuries of essentially empirical and methodological not use the same medicinal plants. And quietly we might add that Hippocrates said will have a day, and Naturology (naturopathy) these, words have done motto " that thy food be thy medicine”.
In this way it becomes almost ridiculous the controversy surrounding health claims in food supplements. There is indeed no reason to technical or scientific justification, being related to the medicinal virtues, or with the safe use, that can a priori and without discretion to prohibit future use of health claims in food supplements, since there is evidence, not only from credible bibliography, but also grounded in extensive use for many years by the respective market. The new lists of approved and pending claims is a reflection, that after all the common sense seems to prevail in these matters.
Author > Eduardo Ribeiro, CEO scientist Department | Quality control| Research and Development- Biogal, Biologia de Portugal Lda.
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[1] The new classification by European legislative imposition, "medicine traditional herbal", is nothing in our opinion a strategy, to facilitate the marketing of plants with a next status of the drug, but facilitating the marketing authorization procedures. To tell the truth should be said that the drug status, much can hardly be within reach of medicinal plants dubbed when used as "vegetable Totum."
[2] The "vegetable Totum" is the total intracytoplasmic of plant cells, except macromolecules of plant wall.
