Hans Verhagen

Food Safety & Nutrition Consultancy

Er is op dit moment onvoldoende wetenschappelijk bewijs om het gebruik van Nutri-Score als effectief instrument voor de volksgezondheid te benoemen. Daarnaast is er sprake van publicatiebias in het voordeel van Nutri-Score. Dat stellen Hans Verhagen en Stephan Peters. (Voeding Nu 2024, 4 pag 18-20.

Summary Several approaches to the use of health claims on foods have been made around the world, and the common theme is that any health claim will require scientific validation and substantiation. There is also broad consensus that any regulatory framework should protect the consumer, promote fair trade and encourage innovation in the food indust...

Nutri-Score and publication bias: it is time for an independent evaluation of the scientific substantiation of Nutri-Score. This is a rapid response in BMJ Global Health to the article: Besancon, S.; Beran, D.; Batal, M. A study is 21 times more likely to find unfavourable results about the nutrition label Nutri-Score if the authors declare a confl...

Kurzer Hintergrund. Im Februar verö8entlichten Peters und Verhagen in der Fachzeitschrift PharmaNutrition eine Literaturstudie zur Validierung und Wirksamkeit des Nutri-Score-Choice-Logos. Diese zeigt, dass die Wirksamkeit von Nutri-Score theoretisch gut belegt ist, es jedoch keine Beweise dafür gibt, dass Nutri-Score ist wirksam bei der Anpassung...

To jest tłumaczenie [22] Peters, S.; Verhagen, H. Pochodzący z przeciwnych stron spektrum interpretacji badań dotyczących Nutri-Score: Nie można odmówić sugestii stronniczości publikacji. PharmaNutrition. - Kontekst - Etykieta Nutri-Score umieszczona na przodzie opakowania jest obecnie proponowana jako system z wyboru w siedmiu krajach UE. Jednakż...

Antecedentes - O sistema de rotulagem nutricional Nutri-Score é atualmente proposto como o sistema de escolha em sete países da UE. Desde Abril Portugal é o 8.º país a introduzir o polémico logótipo. No entanto, ainda há muito debate científico sobre a validação e eficácia do Nutri-Score e há muita discussão sobre a afiliação dos autores e o resul...

Nutri-Score en publicatie-bias. Vanuit welke kant je het ook bekijkt: de suggestie van publicatiebias achter de wetenschap van Nutri-Score kan niet worden ontkend. Korte achtergrond. In februari publiceerden Peters en Verhagen een literatuurstudie naar de validatie en de effectiviteit van het keuzelogo Nutri-Score in het wetenschappelijke journal P...

Questo articolo è una risposta alla risposta degli sviluppatori di Nutri-Score che cercano disqualificare il nostro articolo 'Publication bias and Nutri-Score: A complete literature review of the substantiation of the eCectiveness of the front-of-pack logo Nutri-Score [1]. Questa è la traduzione italiana della nostra risposta pubblicata su PharmaNu...

Esta es una traducción de nuestro artículo en PharmaNutrition [22]. Es nuestra respuesta a la refutación escrita por los desarrolladores de NutriScore en nuestro artículo anterior sobre Nutri-Score y el sesgo de publicación [1]. - Antecedentes - El logotipo nutricional Nutri-Score se propone actualmente como el sistema de elección en siete países d...

-Contexte - Le logo Nutri-Score apposé sur la face avant des emballages alimentaires représente, actuellement, le système d’étiquetage de prédilection appliqué dans sept pays européens. Cependant, le Nutri-Score soulève toujours de nombreux débats scientifiques concernant sa validation et son efficacité. De plus, il existe également de vives discus...

The full article is available on request. - Background - The front-of-pack label Nutri-Score is currently proposed as the system of choice in seven EU countries. However, there is still much scientific debate about the validation and efficacy of Nutri-Score and there is much discussion about author affiliation and study outcome. - Methods - Recent...

Supplementary material with article Publication bias and Nutri-Score: A complete literature review of the substantiation of the effectiveness of the front-of-pack logo Nutri-Score. An overview of our complete investigation is summarised in Supplementary material Table 1. To this end, we have copied the Table from Besancon et al. (2023) and added ar...

Background and objectives: The front-of-pack label Nutri-Score has met a lot of scientific opposition. In the Netherlands, these were major concerns that Nutri-Score was not in line with the Dutch food-based dietary guidelines. In 2022, the algorithm behind the Nutri-Score was updated with the intention to bring it more in line with the general Eur...

Background The front-of-pack label Nutri-Score is currently proposed as the system of choice in seven EU countries. However, there is still much scientific debate about the validation and efficacy of Nutri-Score and there is much discussion about author affiliation and study outcome. Methods To address these issues, we conducted a complete PubMed...

Background and objectives The primary goal of a front-of pack label (FOPL) is stimulating consumers to make healthier food purchases. The basis of all FOPLs are nutrient profiles. Nutrient profiling systems (NPSs) are a way to help communicate health characteristics of foods. In the EU, NPSs are part of Regulation 1924/2006 (on nutrition and healt...

Introduction In the Netherlands the Front-of-pack (FOPL) Nutri-Score has received a lot of opposition (by approximately 180 food scientists in 2019), because Nutri-Score was not sufficiently in line with Dutch food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs). In 2022 an updated algorithm has been published with an attempt to bring Nutri-Score more in line wit...

A meeting on “Dietary supplements, 'functional' and 'super' foods: Science, regulations and roles in the diet” was held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on 29 November 2022. Eight invited speakers drawn from academic, public health, clinical and commercial backgrounds addressed different aspects of the topic from scientific, legislative,...

The reverberations of the Ukraine–Russia conflict have been keenly felt in 2022 as the impacts of Russia's invasion of Ukraine quickly cascaded across the globe, significantly exacerbating existing pressures on global systems. The vulnerabilities of the global food system have been particularly laid bare with significant disruptions to food and fer...

Volgens literatuuronderzoek voldoet Nutri-Score niet aan alle wetenschappelijke eisen voor gezondheidsclaims van de EFSA. Zo leidt Nutri-Score niet tot een verhoogde aankoop van gezonde producten door consumenten. Voeding Nu #5 2022. De peer-review versie van dit artikel kan gevonden worden: Peters & Verhagen 2022 Foods 11(16):2426 An Evaluation of...

In this narrative review, the scientific evidence in support of the front-of-pack label (FOPL) Nutri-Score system is evaluated along with the reasoning for scientific substantiation of health claims in the EU. A health claim could be phrased as ‘Nutri-Score as an FOPL system results in an increased purchase of healthier foods by consumers’. Peer-re...

Background: Seaweed has a high potential for nourishing the future planet. However, besides being beneficial, it also contains adverse components; this poses the question whether consumption of seaweed foods overall contributes beneficially or detrimentally to human health, and hence if their consumption should be promoted or restricted. Methods: T...

Fish and other seafood are important sources of nutrients, but they are also sources of chemical contaminants that may cause adverse health effects. This article aimed to identify existing risk-benefit assessments (RBA) of fish, shellfish, and other seafood, compare methodologies, discuss differences and commonalities in findings, and identify limi...

Endorsement date 21 January 2021 Implementation date 27 March 2021 Following the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on novel foods, the European Commission requested EFSA develop scientific and technical guidance for the preparation and submission of applications for authorisation of novel foods. This guidance presents a common format for the o...

Endorsement date 21 January 2021 Implementation date 27 March 2021 Following the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on Novel Foods, the European Commission requested EFSA to develop a scientific and technical guidance for the preparation and submission of notifications for traditional foods from third countries. This guidance presents a common...

This Statement presents a proposal for harmonising the establishment of Health-Based Guidance Values (HBGVs) for regulated products that are also nutrients. This is a recurrent issue for food additives and pesticides, and may occasionally occur for other regulated products. The Statement describes the specific considerations that should be followed...

Risk-benefit assessment is the comparison of the risk of a situation to its related benefits, i.e. a comparison of scenarios estimating the overall health impact. The risk-benefit analysis paradigm mirrors the classical risk analysis one: risk-benefit assessment goes hand-in-hand with risk-benefit management and risk-benefit communication. The vari...

Objectives: To provide scientific and practical criteria for Nutrient Profiles (NP) in China in order to evaluate the overall nutritional quality of solid pre-packaged food according to their nutrient composition. Methods: Based on data obtained from a survey of experts’ grading of foods available in China, a NP model was established, which covered...

Background: Observational investigations into the health impacts of low-calorie sweeteners (LCSs) in humans fail to adequately identify or fully characterize LCS consumption. Objectives: We aimed to utilize a novel biomarker approach to investigate exposure to 5 LCSs and to test whether reported low-calorie sweetened beverage (LCSB) consumption...

Abstract From 18–21 September 2018, EFSA hosted its third Scientific Conference on Science, Food and Society in Parma, Italy. This paper summarises the overall recommendations on future actions and research priorities of the conference and complements the earlier multi‐authored papers in this issue. The conference started and closed with the plenar...

Abstract Evidence (‘data’) is at the heart of EFSA's 2020 Strategy and is addressed in three of its operational objectives: (1) adopt an open data approach, (2) improve data interoperability to facilitate data exchange, and (3) migrate towards structured scientific data. As the generation and availability of data have increased exponentially in the...

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) regularly collects recommendations from members of the Scientific Committee and Scientific Panels on EFSA's research needs and priorities (EFSA, 2017). At the end of the 2015-2018 Scientific Panels mandate, we collected views of outgoing Panel members on what food safety research areas should be prioritised...

In 2014, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) started the PROMETHEUS (PROmoting METHods for Evidence Use in Scientific assessments) project to improve further and increase the consistency of the methods it uses in its scientific assessments. The project defined a set of principles for the scientific assessment process and a 4‐step approach (pl...

Although the use of low-calorie sweeteners (LCSs) is widespread, methods of assessing consumption within free-living populations have inherent limitations. Five commonly consumed LCSs, namely acesulfame-K, saccharin, sucralose, cyclamate and steviol glycosides are excreted via the urine and therefore a urinary biomarker approach may provide more ob...

Following the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 of the European Parliament and of the Council on novel foods, the European Commission requested EFSA to update and develop scientific and technical guidance for the preparation and presentation of applications for authorisation of novel foods. This guidance presents a common format for the organis...

Following the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Novel Foods, the European Commission requested EFSA to develop a scientific and technical guidance for the preparation and presentation of notifications for traditional foods from third countries. This guidance presents a common format for the organ...

The European Commission asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to review the evaluation of zilpaterol hydrochloride (zilpaterol) by the 81st meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and to assess the available scientific literature in order to evaluate the potential effects of the compound on animal health an...

Background Functional foods are closely associated with claims on foods. There are two categories of claims on foods: nutrition claims and health claims. Nutrition claims refer to what a food contains and comprise content claims and comparative claims. Health claims refer to what a food does and refer to general function claims, claims related to a...

Low-calorie sweeteners (LCS) are commonly used as sugar substitutes in the diet to provide a desired sweet taste without increased energy intake. The number of LCS available on the market has increased considerably over the years and despite extensive evaluation of their safety prior to approval, debate continues around the effects of consumption o...

Fortification of foods consumed by the general population or specific food products or supplements designed to be consumed by vulnerable target groups is amongst the strategies in developing countries to address micronutrient deficiencies. Any strategy aimed at dietary change needs careful consideration, ensuring the needs of at-risk subgroups are...

The safety of some food additives/E - numbers, including low calorie (intense) sweeteners (LCS), is constantly the subject of dispute and controversy. However, since LCS have been assigned an acceptable daily intake (ADI) and an E - number following extensive assessment of available safety and toxicological data, consumer safety is assured. These s...

A food consumption survey in the Dutch elderly population (51-69 years of age) showed an increased trend in micronutrient supplement intake (36.4%; 120/347 participants). Because data on chemical sensitivity in the elderly is lacking, evaluation as to whether the current uncertainty factor (UF) of 10 is sufficient to protect the elderly was investi...

Sulphites or sulphiting agents refer to sodium hydrogen sulphite, sodium metabisulphite, potassium metabisulphite, calcium sulphite, calcium hydrogen sulphite, and potassium hydrogen sulphite. As food additives, they are widely used by the food industry with a variety of commercial uses in food and beverages. Sulphites are effective bleaching agent...

Background: In risk-benefit assessment of food and nutrients, several studies so far have focused on comparison of two scenarios to weigh the health effect against each other. One obvious next step is finding the optimum scenario that provides maximum net health gains. Aim: This paper aims to show a method for finding the optimum scenario that prov...

Aims: Grey literature covers all reports from public research institutes, which are not peerreviewed scientific papers. The aim of this article is to explore the amount and extent of grey literature in the field of nutrition, health and food safety, the retrievability and the view of several scientists on this matter. Study Design: An explorative d...

In the European Union novel foods are defined by the Novel Foods Regulation as food products and food ingredients that have not been consumed to a significant degree in the European Union before May 1997. However, there are new foods for some reason not considered as novel foods, although it may not be excluded that they differ from conventional fo...

Nutrient profiling is an important tool for governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO's) and for the food industry, to help consumers make healthier food choices. Multiple nutrient profiling systems (NPS) have been introduced worldwide. There is, however, no agreement on the use of a single NPS in leading regions like the USA and Europe. In...

BRAFO, Benefit-Risk Analysis for Foods, was a European Commission project funded within Framework Six as a Specific Support Action and coordinated by ILSI Europe. BRAFO developed a tiered methodology for assessing the benefits and risks of foods and food components, utilising a quantitative, common scale for health assessment in higher tiers. This...

Voeding Nu 2012 (11) pag 21-23 Veel mensen maken zich zorgen over intensieve zoetstoffen en met name over aspartaam. Er is een 'natuurlijk' alternatief voor aspartaam: stevia (steviolglycosiden, E960). Gaat stevia de beloftes waarmaken?

If a diet, food or food constituent is recognised to have both health benefits and health risks, the benefits have to be compared with the risks to develop coherent scientific evidence-based dietary advice. This means that both risk and benefit assessment should follow a similar paradigm and that benefits and risks are expressed in a common currenc...

Fortification with folic acid was prohibited in the Netherlands. Since 2007, a general exemption is given to fortify with folic acid up until a maximum level of 100 µg/100 kcal. This maximum level was based on a calculation model and data of adults only. The model requires parameters on intake (diet, supplements, energy) and on the proportion of en...

There is an ongoing increase in the availability of foods fortified with micronutrients and dietary supplements. This may result in differing intakes of micronutrients within the population and perhaps larger differences in intakes. Insight into population micronutrient intakes and evaluation of too low or too high intakes is required to see whethe...

If a diet, food or food constituent is recognised to have both health benefits and health risks, the benefits have to be compared with the risks to develop coherent scientific evidence-based dietary advice. This means that both risk and benefit assessment should follow a similar paradigm and that benefits and risks are expressed in a common currenc...

An integrated benefit-risk analysis aims to give guidance in decision situations where benefits do not clearly prevail over risks, and explicit weighing of benefits and risks is thus indicated. The BEPRARIBEAN project aims to advance benefit-risk analysis in the area of food and nutrition by learning from other fields. This paper constitutes the fi...

Front-of-pack nutrition labels can help consumers to make healthier choices and stimulate healthier product development. This is the first modeling study to investigate the potential impact on cholesterol levels of consuming a diet consisting of products that comply with the criteria for a 'healthier choice logo'. National food consumption and food...

All market participants (e.g., investors, producers, consumers) accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. There are many types of risk including price, production, financial, institutional, and individual human risks. All these risks should be effectively managed in order to derive the utmost of benefits and avoid dis...

It is increasingly recognized that most chronic diseases of concern today are multifactorial in origin. To combat such diseases and adverse health conditions, a treatment approach where medicines and nutrition complement each other may prove to be the most successful. Within nutrition, apart from (disease-related) dietetic regimes, an increasing nu...

The present modelling study aimed to evaluate if and by how much functional foods containing phytosterols/-stanols add to the benefits of statins in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in terms of cost-effectiveness. Long-term health effects, measured as quality-adjusted life-years gained, and costs for scenarios with additional phytosterol/-s...

The respective examples, described in this paper, illustrate how the BRAFO-tiered approach, on benefit-risk assessment, can be tested on a wide range of case studies. Various results were provided, ranging from a quick stop as the result of non-genuine benefit-risk questions to continuation through the tiers into deterministic/probabilistic calcula...

Risk-taking is normal in everyday life if there are associated (perceived) benefits. Benefit-Risk Analysis (BRA) compares the risk of a situation to its related benefits and addresses the acceptability of the risk. Over the past years BRA in relation to food and food ingredients has gained attention. Food, and even the same food ingredient, may con...

Over the past years benefit–risk analysis (BRA) in relation to foods and food ingredients has gained much attention; in Europe and worldwide. BRA relating to food microbiology is however a relatively new field of research. Microbiological risk assessment is well defined but assessment of microbial benefits and the weighing of benefits and risk has...

Benefit–risk assessment in food and nutrition is relatively new. It weighs the beneficial and adverse effects that a food (component) may have, in order to facilitate more informed management decisions regarding public health issues. It is rooted in the recognition that good food and nutrition can improve health and that some risk may be acceptable...

Benefit and risk perception with respect to food consumption, have been a part of human daily life from beginning of time. In today’s society the food chain is long with many different types of actors and low degree of transparency. Making informed food choices where knowledge of benefits and risks is part of the decision making process are therefo...

Benefit-risk assessment in medicine has been a valuable tool in the regulation of medicines since the 1960s. Benefit-risk assessment takes place in multiple stages during a medicine's life-cycle and can be conducted in a variety of ways, using methods ranging from qualitative to quantitative. Each benefit-risk assessment method is subject to its ow...

Environmental health assessment covers a broad area: virtually all systematic analysis to support decision making on issues relevant to environment and health. Consequently, various different approaches have been developed and applied for different needs within the broad field. In this paper we explore the plurality of approaches and attempt to rev...

To postpone cognitive decline and dementia in old age, primary prevention is required earlier in life during middle age. Dietary components may be modifiable determinants of mental performance. In the present study, habitual fruit and vegetable intake was studied in association with cognitive function and cognitive decline during middle age. In the...

Substituting added sugar in carbonated soft drinks with intense sweeteners may have potential beneficial, but also adverse health effects. This study assessed the benefits and risks associated with substituting added sugar in carbonated soft drinks with intense sweeteners in young adults in the Netherlands. A tiered approach was used analogous to t...

All market participants (e.g., investors, producers, consumers) accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. There are many types of risk including price, production, financial, institutional, and individual human risks. All these risks should be effectively managed in order to derive the utmost of benefits and avoid dis...

European Regulation 1924/2006 states that all health claims made on foods need to be substantiated scientifically. To apply the PASSCLAIM criteria for the scientific substantiation of health claims on foods to herbal supplements containing Ginkgo biloba. Evaluation of three selected claimed health effects for G. biloba (improvement of blood circula...

Functional foods are closely associated with claims on foods. There are two categories of claims on foods: nutrition claims and health claims. Health claims on (functional) foods must be scientifically substantiated. In December 2006, the European Union published its Regulation 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods. As concerns sci...

BRAFO stands for Benefit–Risk Analysis for Foods. This European Commission funded project aims at developing a framework that allows quantitative comparison of human health risks and benefits of foods and food compounds based on a common scale of measurement. A methodology group brought together methodologies from several disciplines relevant to t...