Profils nutritionnels : un critère d’éligibilité sans compromis ^*

Président de l’IFN,Institut Français pour la Nutrition, 71 Avenue Victor Hugo, 75116 Paris,

¹ Institut.nutrition@ifn.asso.fr

Abstract

Mid 2006, the French Nutrition Institute (IFN) established a task force to work on the emerging concept of “nutrient profiles”, introduced in the european regulation under negotiation at that time. A first symposium allowed to explore further development of the concept, beyond science (FUFOSE and PASSCLAIM programs) and moral standards. Meanwhile, nutrient profiles have been included in the adopted Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of the EU on nutrition and health claims made on foods, though their technical basis still remains to be established. First searching for criteria that would satisfy the definition of the food categories, the IFN task force sought to collect objective data on the specific features of the various food categories, with regard to intrinsic nutritional characteristics, the benefit and role in the diet, the potential for optimisation and the possible consequences on nutritional allowances, and regulatory considerations. The task force also compared the outcomes of several nutrient profiling systems on the eligibility to claims of several hundreds of “real” food products, which confirmed that the choice of one system might make a lot of difference, according to the type of products. Last November, IFN organized a second symposium on nutrient profiles to take stock of the breakthroughs and expectations of the various actors involved in Europe. The original studies in progress at IFN have been presented on this occasion. Given as an introduction of this second symposium by the President of IFN, the paper below recalls the main objectives of this new Regulation. It also insists on the conditions of credibility of nutrient profiles that need to be easily understood by consumers, and should not be suspected to serve other intentions. Additional reserves are expressed, due to the difficulty of nutrient profiling, to the danger of a possible manipulation of the consumer behaviour, and to the risk of an excessive medicalization of human nutrition.