Following a request by EFSA, the Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens has recently updated the scientific requirements for health claims related to muscle function and physical performance, originally published in 2012.

This guideline has been drafted with the intention of suggesting useful recommendations for the applicants facing the process of obtaining the authorisation of health claims in this specific area.
Initially, the number of applications evaluated for the study by EFSA were 490: however, in the final step, only three of them were considered favourable for the main scope. The Panel also described the peculiarities that help prevent health claims, achieving success.

The specific issues described by the Expert’s Panel are: claimed effects which are considered to be beneficial physiological effects; definition of the target population for which the claim is intended; characteristics of the human intervention studies which can provide evidence for the scientific substantiation of specific claims addressed in this guidance.

Furthermore, all the above issues have been created according to the information regarding claimed effects, outcome variables and methods of measurement collected from a 2014 GRANT initiated by the EFSA.

This up-to-date guidance represents the considerations of the expert’s Panel achieved by analyzing previous applications: but this is surely not an end point. There will be more updates and highlights shortly. Things are moving very quickly in this context, but one thing is certain: the right partner can support a winning EFSA Health Claim Process.