I'm still googling around for more information, but apparently the qualified health claims came into being to provide at least
some kind of control over what supplement and food manufacturers could claim as benefits of their products.
This is from the FDA website:
Quote:
Qualified health claims (QHCs) are supported by scientific evidence, but do not meet the more rigorous “significant scientific agreement” standard required for an authorized health claim. To ensure that these claims are not misleading, they must be accompanied by a disclaimer or other qualifying language to accurately communicate to consumers the level of scientific evidence supporting the claim.
Food manufacturers can petition the agency to consider exercising enforcement discretion for the use of a qualified health claim. The FDA does not “approve” qualified health claim petitions. For a QHC petition with credible scientific evidence, the FDA issues a Letter of Enforcement Discretion including specific claim language that reflects the level of supporting scientific evidence and details of all enforcement discretion factors under which the FDA will not object to the use of the QHC. The process does not involve rulemaking.
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To those who understand that a qualified health claim is not patent agreement by the FDA that there really is a health benefit to a certain food, it at least tones down some of the advertising from earlier decades.
Does anyone recall the old ads showing 90+ year olds hiking, horseback riding, splitting wood - all attributed to eating yogurt all their lives?
And that was just yogurt - Any food company would be able to find a few individuals who were well into their 80's or beyond and have eaten their particular food for their entire lives while staying healthy and active well into old age.
If anyone is interested in reading the (very lengthy) Qualified Health Claims letters to food manufacturers on all the foods currently allowed to display a QHC on their product:
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-label...ment-discretion
Yogurt is under the list related to Diabetes.
I didn't read all 51 pages, but I did notice bits in there about being able to pull the QHC at some point in the future if it turns out future data/statistics show sugared yogurts are not associated with reduced diabetes development (and they also pointed out that sugar consumption is associated with the development of diabetes, so it seems even they were skeptical about the claim, but put it through anyway)
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While looking for that, I came across this:
Letter Regarding Dietary Supplement Health Claim for Fiber With Respect to Colorectal Cancer (Docket No. 91N-0098)
That was issued in 2000.
I checked the letters of approval to see if they'd changed their minds since then on fiber preventing cancer - nope, not on that list.
And yet, everywhere you turn, high fiber foods are still pushed as the #1 way to prevent colorectal cancer. (The letter does point out that people who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables get a lot of fiber in their diets and have lowered chances of colorectal cancer, but there's no concluding evidence that the fiber component is responsible, that it might very well be the nutrients in the fruits and veggies.)