GB16740-2014 "National Standards for Food Safety Health Foods" states that "health foods are foods that do not cause any acute, subacute or chronic harm to the human body and not for the purpose of treating diseases".The "Food Safety Law" stipulates that No pharmaceutical contents may be added to the foods in "health foods”. However, in the news that is currently exposed, there are still many health foods illegally adding pharmaceutical contents or chemicals, and these illegal additives cause many harms to the human body.
The Global Foodmate compiled the functional categories of illegally added health foods, the list of illegally added substances and the illegal addition of new features, and hoped to promote the self-discipline production and management and the scientific consumption of consumers through the dissemination of knowledge.
Health food function category that eaily have illegal additives
The former CFDA issued the "List of substances that may be illegally added in health foods (first batch)", involving six categories of illicitly added health food functions, including weight loss, assisted blood pressure lowering (regulation of blood sugar), and relief of physical fatigue (anti-fatigue) Enhance immunity (regulate immunity), improve sleep, and help lower blood pressure (regulate blood pressure). In addition, relevant literature shows that the function of illicitly added health foods also involves improving hypoxia tolerance, improving growth and development, delaying aging, clearing throat, promoting laxative digestion, and regulating blood lipids. Some foods claim to have aphrodisiac, refreshing, and improve the function of menopausal syndrome. They are also easy to add chemicals illegally, and these are not among the 27 functional scope of health food allowed by the state.
List of illegally added substances
The "List of substances that may be illegally added in health foods (first batch)" includes more than 40 illegal additives, generally are chemicals. In November 2017, the former CFDA issued a notice on three food supplement inspection methods, including the detection of 75 illegally added chemical drugs in health foods. The 75 substances involved in the annexes to the announcement were all illegal additions.
Hazard of illegal additions
The substances illegally added to health foods are generally pharmaceutical chemical drugs. It is illegal to add pharmaceutical chemical to health foods. At the same time, due to inaccurate dosage, it may cause different side effects to the users, such as drug dependence, drug resistance, liver function damage, severe renal dysfunction, especially heart rate. Serious problems such as accelerated heartbeat, and even death.
The illegal addition of health food presents new features
In recent years, with the increase in the national supervision force on health foods, the phenomenon of illegal addition has decreased, but it has presented new features:
Illegal addition of a variety of chemical drugs, such as in the weight loss health foods found in the addition of more than two kinds of chemical drugs, although the amount of each drug additive did not reach the therapeutic dose, but a variety of combinations can achieve therapeutic effects.