Resveratrol food supplement products and the challenges of accurate label information to ensure food safety for consumers

Bensa, Maja (author), Vovk, Irena (author), Glavnik, Vesna (author)

The food supplement market is growing as many consumers wish to complement their nutrient intake. Despite all the regulations in place to ensure food supplements safety, there are still many cases of irregularities reported especially connected to internet sales. Twenty resveratrol food supplement products sold on the Slovenian market were evaluated on their compliance of declared vs. determined resveratrol content, as well as the compliance of labels with the European Union (EU) and Slovenian regulatory requirements. Both the ingredient contents and food information are important parts of food safety. Analyses of 20 food supplements performed using high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) coupled with densitometry showed that 95% of products had contents different from what was declared and 55% of products contained higher contents than declared. In 25% of the products the determined content per unit exceeded the maximum level (150 mg/day) specified in EU novel food conditions for food supplement with trans-resveratrol. Evaluation of the 20 food supplement labels included mandatory and voluntary food information, food supplement information, novel food information, health claims and nutrition claims. Most labels contained the necessary information, but multiple errors were observed ranging from typos to misleading practices. From a food safety perspective there is still a lot of improvement needed in the field of food supplements.

• Language: English
• Keywords: trans-resveratrol, dietary supplements, food safety, regulation, labels, health claims, nutrition claims, novel foods, high-performance thin-layer chromatography, HPTLC
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: ZF - Faculty of Health Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: 22 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 15, iss. 2, art. 474
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-155618
• UDC: 577
• ISSN on article: 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu15020474
• COBISS.SI-ID: 138940163
• Publication date in RUL: 08.04.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nutrients
• Shortened title: Nutrients
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2072-6643
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2948140

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: biokemija, živila, prehranska dopolnila, skladnost, varnost, deklaracije, kromatografija

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P1-0005
• Name: Funkcionalna živila in prehranska dopolnila