The inconvenient fact that “health foods are bad for your health”…The terrifying risks of health foods revealed by the red yeast rice supplement issue Do you want to participate in a “grand human experiment”? | PRESIDENT Online

Can health foods really make you healthy? Kazunori Matsunaga, a science journalist, says, “The foods, plants, microorganisms, etc. that are the raw materials for health foods contain substances that can have negative effects on health.By being processed into tablets, capsules, powders, etc. The problem is that we end up ingesting large amounts of them.”

“It’s food so it’s safe” is just an illusion

Due to the health hazards caused by Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s red yeast rice supplements, the difficulty of managing the production of health foods has been brought into focus. Many of the ingredients in health foods are the food itself, plants, and microorganisms. Phrases such as “because it’s food,” “because it’s traditional,” and “because it’s natural” spread the illusion of safety and health.

Red yeast rice supplement was also a product based on such a fantasy. However, as I have written previously, red yeast mold and Aspergillus oryzae are different species, and there is no scientific evidence that red yeast rice was ever a traditional food. In the previous article, I pointed out that although the effects were actually due to ingredients equivalent to pharmaceuticals, the management was sloppy.

Nature is actually scary. The image that “it’s safe because it’s food” is wrong. Food naturally contains various chemicals and microorganisms, and the risk is not zero, and even the slightest defect can directly lead to health problems.

Chikako Uneyama, a visiting researcher at Ritsumeikan University who has studied health food issues for many years, says she wants people to understand the concept of “food safety margin.” This concept will be extremely important in understanding the problems with the red yeast rice supplement and food with functional claims system and considering the future fate of the system, so I will explain it here.

There are many foods with a small safety margin.

Margin is a word that indicates the difference or spread between wins and losses. The safety margin of a food product usually represents the difference between the amount you can eat and the amount you actually consume. Many people think that food does not contain substances that pose a health threat, but this is not the case; it can contain toxic substances and even harmful microorganisms.

As shown in Figure 1, for both chemicals and microorganisms, health effects appear as the intake increases, and large doses can have serious effects, but no effects are detected below the non-toxic level.

If possible, we would like to keep the intake amount well below the non-toxic level. This is the “margin of safety”. And the safety margin for ordinary foods is often surprisingly small. In other words, there are quite a few cases where you are eating close to the amount that would have a negative impact on your health.