A Flood of Health Functional Foods: What Is to Be Recommended?

Lee, Eun Sil

The term "health functional food" means food manufactured or processed in a form of tablet, capsule, powder, granule, liquid or pill, etc. with ingredients or components, that possess the functionality useful for human body in accordance with Article 3 of the Korean Health Functional Food Act. About 25 different supplements including chitosan, squalene and others are approved as supplementary health foods, and they have been sold as medicine or food. The term "health food supplements" used until 2002 is now currently converted to "health functional foods." This term is used interchangeably as dietary supplements in the United States, food for specific health use in Japan, and food supplements in Europe. 1 Even though accurate statistics have not been available in Korea, the scale of Korea' s health functional food market was estimated to be worth 3.9 trillion won in 2011. Some reports have suggested that sharp rise in demand for health functional foods has been observed as external environmental factors such as avian influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have increasingly drawn much attention since 2008. Red ginseng is one of the most widely consumed health functional foods, in addition to multivitamin, omega-3, glucosamine and others. The most commonly consumed food is red ginseng, followed by multivitamin, omega-3, glucosamine and aloe in women in the 50' s. 2