Foods Highly Containing Diacylglycerol

Summary

Abstract

The Food Safety Commission of Japan (FSCJ) conducted a risk assessment on foods highly containing diacylglycerol (DAG) (hereinafter referred to as DAG foods), based on results from various studies. The safety of DAG foods, as foods for specified health use, was once evaluated by the Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). On September 11, 2003, FSCJ approved the evaluation of the MHLW’s council to be appropriate. Subsequent MHLW’s two-stage carcinogenicity studies on edible oils highly containing DAG (hereinafter referred to as DAG oils) conducted from September 2005 to February 2009 supported the MHLW’s judgment “No concern relevant to human health even though all the edible conventional oils were substituted with DAG oils”. FSCJ continued to conduct also a risk assessment of DAG oils focusing on the minor constituent, glycidol fatty acid esters (GE). DAG oils and related products have been, however, retracted from the market in September 2009 in Japan. DAG foods are thus unlikely to expose people, and no further data necessary for the assessment are available on the consumption of DAG foods (period, amount, age, etc.) and varieties of confounding factors in lifestyle. Lack of individual data on the exposure makes it difficult from the reliable estimation of lifetime cancer risk. The food safety assessment thus could not be completed. Current scientific considerations on the possible adverse effects of DAG oils and GE as contaminants in food oils are summarized in the appendices.