ABSTRACT
In Japan, they say that food is medicine, which means that eating a well-balanced diet on a daily basis helps prevent and treat disease. This way of thinking has become quite common for the Japanese. Knowledge of functional foods has been around since the 1970s and became a trend in the 1980s. This was because an aging society was a social problem in Japan and people were increasingly interested in dietary habits to stay healthy and live longer. The health food market thus expanded with this boom but some of the products were criticized because their promotional statements were not based on scientifi c evidence. In response to this, studies of a certain food or its ingredients expected to be useful for the prevention of a specifi c disease was performed systematically. After much discussion, a new regulatory health claim system was fi nally positioned within the category of Foods for Special Dietary Use by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry in 1991. The new system allowed for labeling that states “For Specifi ed Health Use” for all processed food.
