The Influence of the FDA

The FDA is an organization that the evidence-based review process for evaluating the evidence for health claims and qualified health claims.  A health claim is any claim that is made on a label, food, or dietary supplements.  All health claims and qualified health claims need to be reviewed and evaluated by the FDA.  Evidenced based reviews in the field of nutrition have become more common in evaluating the strength of the scientific evidence on a nutritional statement.  The FDA seeks to by objective by relying on verified evidence, being flexible in the levels of data needed to support the validity of the different substance/ disease relationships, and by being responsive to the need to re-evaluate the data as experimentation are refined.  Substances are defined as being a food such as tomatoes, or a food component like lycopene.  A disease is defined as damage to an organ, part, structure, or system of the body that has not been properly functioning.  There are several health claims that have been shown to meet the standards of significant scientific agreement.  In regards to cancer, dietary lipids, fiber-containing grain products,fruits and vegetables have been shown to have effects on the body.  In terms of coronary heart disease, dietary saturated fat and cholesterol, products containing soluble fiber, soy protein, and plant sterol.  Sodium is proven to have an effect in hypertension, folate is know to stop neural tube defects, dietary noncarciogenic carbohydrate sweeteners in dental carries, and calcium and vitamin D are shown to have benefits for osteoporosis.  Qualified health claims subject to enforcement discretion include the effect of tomatoes on prostate, ovarian, gastric, and pancreatic cancers, calcium in colon/rectal cancer, green tea in breast and prostate cancer, selenium in bladder, prostate and thyroid cancer, walnuts in coronary heart disease, and phosphatidylserine in insulin resistance and dementia.
Basically, the purpose of the FDA is to evaluate the health claims made in regard to food, medication, nutritional supplements, and basically any kind of things that may have an impact on one's health.  The FDA is shown to be an organization that works to make sure that people are not being taken advantage of by it's makers.  Of course, the every day person needs to be able to distinguish how the FDA is involved in establishing the rules that are enforced in the market places.  I am of the opinion that the FDA's influence is not that significant because the majority of the population is not as well informed about the way that the FDA determines what is safe to consume.