Manufacturers of Garcinia cambogia products will also need to add the precaution statement “avoid consumption with functional health foods that reduce body fat”.
The MFDS announced the above as it releases findings on functional ingredients re-evaluation on January 7.
The above precautions have been placed on Garcinia cambogia extract as a response to reports of adverse health events, including urticaria, abdominal pain and abnormalities in menstrual cycles.
This means that products containing the ingredient will now need to be labelled with five precaution statements of use. The existing precautions include “avoid overconsumption for men” and “consult a specialist if you have liver, heart diseases, allergies or asthma.”
In fact, other regulators around the region are also starting to tighter their control of Garcinia cambogia.
Australia, for example, is requiring from March 1 this year that health supplements containing Garcinia cambogia – also known as Garcinia gummi-gutta, or other ingredients that similarly contain hydroxycitric acid (HCA), will need to warn consumers of liver harm risks on the product labelling.
Reishi removed
Aside from Garcinia cambogia, South Korea’s MFDS also released the re-evaluation results of eight other functional raw materials.
They are soy isoflavone, guava leaf extract, evening primrose seed extract, lecithin, hematococcus extract, mucopolysaccharide and protein, reishi mushroom fruiting body extract, and collagen peptide.
As a result, the status of reishi mushroom fruiting body extract as a health functional food raw material has been removed, as its “functionality has not been confirmed after re-evaluation.”
With its removal, there are now 81 raw materials in the health functional foods ingredients directory.
Other precaution statements and daily intake adjustment
The other seven ingredients would need to be added with the precautions “children, pregnant women, and lactating women should avoid consumption” and “if adverse reactions occur, stop taking the product and consult a specialist”.
Those containing mucopolysaccharide and protein would also need to include the precaution “some individuals may have hypersensitivity reactions due to allergic constitutions etc.”
The daily intake amount of some of these ingredients have also been adjusted.
For example, the daily intake of non-glycolytic soy isoflavone has been increased from 24 to 27 mg to 37 to 45mg.
As for lecithin, the daily intake has been increased from between 1.2 and 18g to 18g, while that of astaxanthin in hematococcus extract has been raised from between four and 12mg to between six and 12mg.
Similarly, the daily intake of mucopolysaccharide and protein has been increased from 1.2 and 1.5g to 2g.
There were also changes made to the sources of the raw materials.
Lecithin, for example, is only allowed to come from soybean instead of the current arrangement where it can come from both soybean and egg yolk. The amount of the heavy metal lead allowed to be present in lecithin is also reduced from 2mg/kg or less to 0.5mg/kg or less.
Mucopolysaccharide and protein, on the other hand, can only be sourced from the cartilage tissues of pigs, chickens, and sharks.
Currently, it can also be sourced from a wide range of animals, such as the cartilage tissues of cattle, sheep, deer, horses, rabbits, donkeys, squid, crabs, fish, and shellfish.
