Recognition of food with health claims by medical staff

Abstract

  The use of foods that are labeled with the nutrient function claims has been increasing in Japan. Food with health claims is food having permission from and notification by the national government. It is expected that many questions will emerge about food with health claims directed from patients to the medical staff in a clinical context. However, very little is known regarding the recognition of food with health claims by the medical staff. We studied the existence of food with health claims by requesting 59 medical staff members to fill out a self-entry type questionnaire. Forty-nine staff members (83.1%) could recognize the names of foods with health claims that was categorized into two groups; i. e., foods with nutrient function claims and foods for specified health uses. Thirty five staff members (59.3%) had received such a query from patients, while 39 (66.1%) lacked information about foods with health claims. Many of the medical staff members wanted to obtain more information through the internet or at a congress. These results suggested that the recognition of and the information about foods with health claims amongst the medical staff members is inadequate.