Study On Theory And Practice Of Health Food In China

There has been a tradition for Chinese people to preserving health since thousands of years ago. It is recorded that this tradition originated in remote antiquity, formed in Qin and Han dynasty, and grew into a unique system with the complementing and consummating work of the past centuries. The theory and practice of health preserving is a precious treasure with abundance content, which has not only contributed to the prosperity of Chinese people, but also has been popular in the world. Traditional health preserving theory and practice comprises three parts: nutritional treatment, health preserving with drugs and therapeutics besides foods and drugs. The development of the former two gave birth to health food which has now been a burgeoning industry. The contents of administration of health food in Food Hygiene Law of the People's Republic of China enacted in October 1996, which established the status of health food in law, ended the period during which there was no concerned laws and regulations, and began a new era in which health food would be administrated legally. And the laws, regulations and standards promulgated subsequently, together with Food Hygiene Law, built up the supervision system of the health food market in China. State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) carried out the function of examination, assessment and approval of health food since October 2003. And the system of laws, regulations and standards has improved remarkably since then. All of these indicated a leap in the development of the health food industry. There were 8684 products approved in all up to the end of 2005, including 8109 indigenous and 575 imported. The products approved by Ministry of Health consisted of 5535 homemade and 575 foreign. And products approved by SFDA were composed of 2574 indigenous and 85 imported. Although the number of products in market is only about half of the number approved, health food has been doing great benefit to the society and economy.The systemic analysis has never be done up to now with regard to the number, the function distribution, the major materials, the effective components, the distribution of preparation formulation, and the market conditions. Although several consultants have done some investigations based on the data from the network, the uncertainty of theinformation and conclusions is unavoidable because of the fallible data source and the inexact understanding of the laws and regulations, which has sabotaged the veracious assessment of the actual status and the trend in development.In this study, the status quo of health food industry, which has been commercialized, popularized and legalized in administration, was analyzed grounding on the construal of the origin and development of traditional theory and practice of health preserving. And the status in-country and out-of-country of health food administration was compared for the sake of using successful experience for reference. Then some opinions and suggestions aiming at the problems in Chinese health food industry were brought forward in order to offer some scientific reference for the benign development of health food and for the further consummation of the concerned laws, regulations and standards. 1. Primary Technique1.1 Data Source1.1.1 Data of the approved products: the primary source is the database of approval certificate of health food of the technique examination system from Jun.l, 1996 to Dec.31, 2003. The content of the correlative affiches publicized by Ministry of Public Health and SFDA, as well as some primordial records of some products, is involved.1.1.2 Data of the health food industry: these data are made up of information from 2003 database of State Statistic Bureau, information from Meihua advertisement company in Shanghai and information from the investigation of retail terminal of health food market in 2004 sponsored by the Chinese Health Care Association and Health Food Detecting center.1.2 Statistical Analysis1.2.1 Statistical analysis of the approved products: the annual totalities, the function distribution, the frequency of the major materials and the effective components, the distribution of preparation formulations and the area distribution of products as well as the enterprises were analyzed respectively based on the products from Jun.l,1996 to Dec.31,2003.1.2.2 Analysis on the products in market: the conditions of the retail terminals, economic performance of health food industry, the characters of the advertisement release, the marketing model and so on are analyzed.2. Results:2.1 The totality of the approved products is large and there are 8684 products in all. However, the scientific level is not high and the phenomenon of low-level repeat is very common.2.2 The marketing models are diversiform and the potential is tremendous. Whereas, the consumers' idea of self-health-care is poor and the influence of advertisement is still obvious. Moreover, enough attention has not been paid to the individual model of health management marketing and the lack of idiographic direction from professionals is prevalent.2.3 Comparing with the developed countries, the system of the supervision and administration of health food in our country is distinctive, and the system of laws, regulations and standards is highly comprehensive. However, the continuable development is cumbered with some faultiness, such as the limitation of the conception and function scope prescribed by the government, the imperfection of the procedure and technique of safety assessment and functional assessment, the deficiency of criterion of technique examination and assessment, standards for label and the governing principles on exploitation, the scarcity of consumers' knowledge of self-health-care and so on. Considering such conditions, some opinions and suggestions are put forwards:3. Suggestions:3.1 Standardizing the conception and category of health food in lawIt should be ascertained whether the actual value of health care functions is made up of the physiological functions besides traditional role in nutrition or of functions specified by the government. And the standards for product formulation, craft and packaging should be constituted to distinguish health food from common foods.3.2 Recensing and consummating the concerned standards and regulationsThe procedure and technique of safety assessment and functional assessment, as well as the list of common materials and the hygienic criterion, should be further consummated. The research in new functions should be enhanced to gradually expand the scope of health care function. And measures should be taken to protect the innovative products, especially the products having the out-list functions.3.3 Establishing and actualizing the standard administration modelAdministration of dietary supplement should adopt a standard management pattern which sets up a file forehand and supervises afterwards. The normative model can be introduced into the supervision system for products which have a mass of congeneric products and have been proved safe by feedback information of years, especially for products using single material.3.4 Standardizing the label and advertisement of productsIt should be marked in the remarkable position of the labels and the advertisements of health food: "This product does not have to use in disease treating and preventing". The goal crowd does not have to claim for patients of some disease. Moreover, the represent of nutrient addition agents and functions of nutriments should profit from the standardized management in Japan and America to use the statement of nutriments in the RNI scope to approve the claim, and putting claims on records for nutrient addition agents based on the classical nutriology theory instead of examining and approving.The unified propaganda standards should be formulated for the health care functions that have been proven by scientific functional assessments. The propaganda should be carried out in a pellucid way replacing specialty terms which are difficult for consumers to understand and does no favor for enterprises to propagandize their own products reasonably.3.5 Operating functions of non-government apartmentsThe government apartments should enhance the train and direction for folk organizations aiming at exerting their active effects and regulating the action of concerned institutions.3.6 Establishing the technique principles and regulations for exploitationThe exploiture of health food in our country should determine goal crowd in view of market demand, make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China, build exploitation combinations to share resources, and develop legally considering the combination of universality and particularity. The government departments should constitute the principles and regulations based on it.3.7 Normalizing the marketing administrationThe marketing administration of health food should borrow ideas from the successful experience of professional apothecary direction in drug marketing, sparkplug the individual service model taking the general practice and service management pattern as the instruction, and operate the direction effect in the distribution of the new professions such as health manager and public nutrition consultant.3.8 Increasing the investment in fundamental researchTo promote the development of health food, the state should enhance the support in the fundamental research, such as researches on the combination principle, the formula basis, the hygienic standard, the processing craft, the methods in the safety assessment and functional assessment as well as in qualitative quota examination for the material scope and the effective ingredient and/or the symbolic ingredient, the standard system for common materials as well as withdraws.3.9 Consummating the procedure of the technique Examination and assessmentThe reformation in technique assessment should be deepened through constituting and consummating the regulation and criterion on technique registration, improving the specialty capability of the syndics, removing the disturbance from non-technique factors, and unifying the yardstick of different syndics to represent the principle- "to be scientific, open, fair, just, efficient and convenient".