Functional foods: regulation and innovations in the EU

Worldwide consumers are becoming more interested in the relation between food and health. In order to harmonize regulation on foods throughout the EU, the Regulation EC1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims came into force, as a first specific set of EU legal rules dealing with nutrition and health claims. A Union List of EU-wide approved claims is now being developed that creates a level playing-field on which food operators can innovate, backed by legal certainty to ultimately bring benefits to the consumer. This paper assesses the new Regulation and its impact on the functional food innovation process, functional foods being conventional food products with added substances to promote health. Food innovation is perceived as a collective effort of a variety of actors within the context of a network of institutions, whose activities and interactions initiate, import and diffuse new innovations. Both desk research and semi-structured interviews with actors in the Dutch functional food value chain have been performed to explore the impact of the new Regulation. It seems that the new regulatory regime may not only be restrictive but also selective for future functional food innovative activities.