Discover your next big idea at PACK EXPO Las Vegas this September
Experience a breakthrough in packaging & processing and transform your business with solutions from 2,300 suppliers spanning all industries.
REGISTER NOW & SAVE

You Are Wrong About Nutraceuticals, Functional Foods, and Dietary Supplements. But I Will Explain.

Lawyers love to tell people they are wrong.

Eric Greenberg
Eric Greenberg

When we lawyers tell opponents in litigation they are wrong, we tell judges they are wrong, and smart lawyers even tell their clients they are wrong when necessary. Why do we do it? Well, correcting people makes us feel superior, and after all, everyone needs a hobby.

So in keeping with the legal tradition, I will explain everything for you about the world of nutraceuticals, functional foods, and dietary supplements, which are the subject of widespread misunderstandings. Not on your part, of course, I said, smiling.

1) “Nutraceuticals.” There’s no such thing as ‘nutraceuticals.’ Not legally anyway. It’s not a recognized term from the Food and Drug Administration’s point of view, because the agency recognizes only “dietary supplements”—products taken by mouth and intended to supplement one’s intake of this or that—and “foods”—of which dietary supplements are a subset and the rest are referred to as “traditional” foods or beverages—and “drugs”—articles other than foods that are intended to do something with respect to a disease or to affect the structure or a function of the body.

The source of much confusion is the fact that both dietary supplements and traditional foods are permitted by law to make claims on their labels of effects on the structure and function of the body, as drugs are, and even in rare instances to make claims about reducing the risk of some diseases, as one commonly thinks of drugs as doing.

“Nutraceuticals” is a marketing term, one that combines parts of two words “nutrition,” because they look and taste like ingested foods with nutritional value, and “pharmaceuticals,” because they are intended to give some health benefit like a drug does.

Conveying Innovations Report
Editors report on distinguishing characteristics that define each new product and collected video demonstrating the equipment or materials as displayed at the show. This topical report, winnowed from nearly 300 PACK EXPO collective booth visits, represents a categorized, organized account of individual items that were selected based on whether they were deemed to be both new, and truly innovative, based on decades of combined editorial experience in experiencing and evaluating PACK EXPO products.
Take me there
Conveying Innovations Report
Annual Outlook Report: Automation & Robotics
What's in store for CPGs in 2025 and beyond? <i>Packaging World</i> editors explore the survey responses from 118 brand owners, CPG, and FMCG <i>Packaging World</i> readers for its new Annual Outlook Report.
Download
Annual Outlook Report: Automation & Robotics