Health Claims for Traditional Fermented Foods

Traditional fermented food products were empirically developed to render perishable edible as well as non-edible raw material into products which have a prolonged lifetime. Moreover, fermentation, via metabolic enzymatic reactions, adds to taste or texture, while it enhances the nutritional value of raw material by producing vitamins and bioactive metabolites, and by ridding foodstuffs of their anti-nutrients. With the increasing evidence that some bacteria, known as probiotics, can be beneficial to human health, interest in fermented foods has recently greatly increased. Nutrition and health claims are labeling packaged food products with the intention of positively influencing consumer perceptions about them. To inform and to protect consumers from misleading information, the European Commission has put in place a legislative framework regulating all nutrition and health-related claims which may be labeling food products. Official approval of a health claim for a food is granted following strict standards, and requires sufficient experimental and clinical evidence for this purpose. Drawing from the progress achieved within the ‘PIMENTO’ – an ongoing European action aiming at valorising fermented foods – yogurt is employed as a case-study for demonstrating the way in which traditional foods may benefit by obtaining an official claim about their health-promoting properties.