The designation of food additives is based on risk assessment by the Food Safety Commission of Japan (FSCJ) and subsequent review by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. However, risk assessment of food additives for nutrient fortification, so-called nutrient-related food additives, requires consideration of their intrinsic characteristics, i.e. that a nutrient is biologically essential. Recently, the FSCJ have established novel guidelines for safety assessment of nutrient-related food additives based on special consideration of their safety. In these guidelines, as the main emphasis is on safety data for humans, concrete parameters for identifying adverse health effects in humans and methods for assessing the highest intake in human as an alternative point of departure to no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) are described. This paper gives an outline of these guidelines focusing especially on safety assessment of nutrient-related food additives.

In addition to olive fruit, olive leaves contain abundant polyphenols such as oleuropein, and olive leaf tea has been produced with a focus on this point. However, the functionality of olive leaf tea on human health is still unclear. Therefore, we performed a parallel, randomized trial of two groups, using olive leaf tea and green tea as test beverages. The subjects were 40‐70-year-old nondiabetic men and women with borderline or mildly high serum levels of LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) . Only in the olive leaf tea group, body weight (p＜0.05) and waist circumference (p＜0.01) were significantly decreased after the 12-week intervention. LDL-C levels tended to be decreased (p＝0.054) in the olive leaf tea group, although there were no noticeable effects of olive leaf tea in terms of improvement of glucose and lipid metabolism. Further investigations will be needed to clarify the effect of olive leaf tea on human health.

The Japanese soup stock known as dashi is used in many traditional Japanese cuisines and its taste and flavor are assumed to be fundamental components of most dishes. Recently, some studies have indicated that long-term intake of dashi has certain health benefits. In this study, we focused on the immediate effect of dashi intake on autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and mental fatigue. Twenty-four healthy, non-smoking volunteers participated. The subjects consumed an assigned breakfast at 09:00, and the experiments were conducted between 10:30 and 11:30. Heart rate variability (HRV) was used as an indicator of ANS activity. To measure the degree of mental fatigue, the flicker test was performed before and after a simple calculation task, the “Uchida Kraepelin Test” for 30 minutes. Subjective assessment of emotional state was also conducted using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS) . We observed a transient increase of parasympathetic nervous activity after intake of dashi. Olfactory perception of dashi odor also induced a similar effect on ANS. The flicker test and VAS evaluation demonstrated that dashi intake reduced the accumulation of fatigue caused by the calculation task. These results suggests that dashi may exert its relaxation and anti-fatigue effects through elevation of parasympathetic nervous activity, and that the aroma of dashi may have an important role in this function.