Assessment of food supplements containing botanicals in epidemiological research

The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of how food supplements containing botanicals (or PFS) are being assessed in epidemiological research. The chapter is organized in six sections: Sect. 3.1 is the introduction, which provides a background to the topics explained in the subsequent sections, and also describes the objectives of the chapter; Sect. 3.2 describes the market structure of the food supplements containing botanicals in EC Member States, for which a revision of recent reports on market data, trends and main distribution channels, is presented; Sect. 3.3 describes the methods and administration techniques used to assess individual food consumption, which are adapted to design the methods and techniques for the assessment of individual intake of food supplements containing botanicals; moreover, the methodology designed for data collection on PFS consumption in a six-European-country survey within the PlantLIBRA project is presented as an example of tools used in the assessment of these products; Sect. 3.4 describes the methodology used in the PlantLIBRA Consumer Survey in detail; Sect. 3.5 presents selected results of the first analyses of the PlantLIBRA Consumer Survey, also highlighting the issues associated with measuring usage of PFS in European populations and making recommendations for future research; finally, Sect. 3.6 presents a systematic review conducted with the purpose of analysing the uses that PFS have in gastrointestinal health and disease through selected plants.