Medicinal Foods: A Category Absent from Regulator’s Plate

• Turmeric, a spice in Indian cuisine, has potential in lab tests and clinical trials.
• Traditional use of plants as medicines is supported by centuries of knowledge systems like Ayurveda.
• A study found that about a quarter (1,788) of the 7,564 medicinal species listed in 11 referenced sources were documented as food as well as medicine.
• Safety of foods as medicines is a concern as many plants and their derivatives are now found in the market in new combinations, recipes, and applications.
• The 2017 Indian Food Composition Table (IFCT) documents only over 5% of the 1,788 Indian food plants identified as being used as both food and medicine.
• Regulations of the way plants are named also control how their subspecies, varieties, and hybrids are specified in scientific terms.
• Standardizing plant nomenclature for Regulatory Process is crucial due to climate change affecting plant varieties and their nutritional value and bioactivity.
• Food and medicine are regulated by separate government agencies in most countries, not acknowledging the different uses of the same plant.
• Drug regulators establish higher requirements for evidence for efficacy and safety than food regulators.