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Environment
and Consumer
Fortified foods: addition
of vitamins and minerals
Vitamins and
minerals are added to food for fortifying and enriching foods, for
restoring nutrients lost during storage, handling and manufacturing
of foods and for producing substitute foods that resemble common
foods in appearance and taste - the most well-known of these products
being margarine (fortified with vitamins A and D). The European
Parliament's Environment and Health Committee is considering
proposals which define the purposes for which vitamins and minerals
can be added to food, which list the vitamins, vitamin preparations,
minerals and mineral salts that may be used, and which set certain
restrictions on criteria for maximum and minimum levels.
Common EU rules
will facilitate the free circulation of goods within the single
market whilst ensuring a high level of consumer protection. The
debate, however, is between an approach that checks the safety of
adding vitamins and minerals and one that restricts what foods can
be fortified on the basis that the addition of vitamins and minerals
to otherwise "unhealthy" products could attract consumers
to buy these products on a supposed false impression. The labelling
of fortified foods with health claims will in any case be regulated
by the Nutritional and Health Claims proposals.
As long as controls
ensure that public safety is protected, consumers should not be
denied the choice of fortified foods which make a positive contribution
to public health.
Under draft proposals, a ban of addition of vitamins and minerals to all
alcoholic beverages (containing more than 1.2% alcohol by volume)
would have meant that tonic wine would have been banned. John Bowis ensured that tonic wine - made by Benedictine monks at Buckfast
Abbey in Devon for generations - did not fall foul of these proposals.
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