It is expected that the plans will be implemented in the second half of this year.
The comments were made during the Functional Health Food Development Conference organised by Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) and the Korea Food and Nutrition Society in conjunction with the Food Safety Day.
Two initiatives were announced at the conference, namely the “Personalized Nutrition Management System at home and abroad” and “Future Direction of Future Development of Functional Health Foods in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Period”.
Dr Kyu Hong Kim, a professor at KFDA’s Health and Functional Food Policy Research Center said new regulations would be need to cover the advances in customised functional health food.
For instance, pharmacies will need to strengthen its efforts on consumer protection and communications before it can start to sell personalised nutrition products.
Korean authorities are paying more attention to health food as the industry saw accelerated growth in recent years.
"In the past, 'health supplement food' was said to be unscientific, but health functional food is now an industry that is highly competitively globally and has witnessed high exports as a high value added food industry.
“As such, K-food should be developed into a customized health functional food system so that it can contribute to the national economy," local media Food News cited Jung Yoon-wha, chairman of the Food and Nutrition Science Foundation as saying.
Korea’s personalised nutrition market
One of the firms that have launched personalised nutrition in Korea is Herbalife Nutrition.
It launched Gene Start – a portable genetic testing kit that analyses an individual’s genetic makeup, lifestyle and dietary habits.
This in turn allows the firm to provide customised nutrition plans to the users, as well as to promote and sell suitable products from its own portfolio.
