EFSA launches intake model assesses chronic dietary exposure to food enzymes

01 Aug 2024 --- The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) launched its Food Enzyme Intake Model (FEIM), an open-source platform for calculating the exposure to the food enzyme Total Organic Solids (TOS) when a specific food enzyme is used in one or more food manufacturing processes. The tool estimates chronic dietary exposure to food enzymes used in the manufacturing of produce food ingredients or foods.

The FEIM web tool originated from a long-standing effort that began with an industry call in 2016 for data on food enzyme-specific uses for various manufacturing processes. The data was matched to FoodEx2 categories and assembled into a catalog.

The tool is freely accessible to anyone through the R4EU platform upon registration. It allows users to obtain intake estimates for a specific enzyme under its intended uses by choosing one or more relevant food manufacturing processes and entering the corresponding enzyme use levels, expressed as mg TOS/kg of raw materials.

Earlier this year, the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens released a scientific opinion on the revision of the tolerable upper intake level for preformed vitamin A and β-carotene following two requests from the European Commission.

Exposure assessment procedure
FEIM follows the methodology recommended in the clinical expert panel’s scientific guidance for submitting dossiers on food enzymes with input data curated according to the guidance on food manufacturing processes and technical data used in the exposure assessment of food enzymes. 

In 2023, the catalog contained 40 individual food manufacturing processes. By collating that data, 30 FEIM spreadsheet calculators were created, combining the collected data with consumption data from the European Food Consumption Database. These calculators provided process-specific exposure results for different population groups, such as infants, toddlers or adults in different countries of the EU.  

A tool was needed to calculate cumulative exposure from multiple food manufacturing processes, which was realized through the FEIM web tool adopted at the first plenary meeting of the Food Enzymes Panel. 

In May, EFSA gave the nod for using naringenin extract as a flavoring substance in foods based on Spain-based ingredient formulator HealthTech Bioactives’ scientific dossier. Naringenin is a bioactive polyphenol found in citrus fruits and is used as a “taste modifier” in beverages, dairy and plant-based products.

Centered on dietary exposure
In the European Union, EFSA evaluates a food enzyme’s safety based on a technical dossier provided by an applicant. Dietary exposure is an integral part of the risk assessment of food enzymes. 

In addition to the FEIM, there is a Food Additives Intake Model (FAIM) to estimate chronic dietary exposure to food additives. It allows users to calculate the mean and high-level exposure to food additives for different population groups in several European countries.

FAIM can be used by applicants, risk assessors and risk managers to estimate exposure to new food additives or already authorized food additives for which a new use is proposed. 

The user can enter the occurrence levels for the food additive under evaluation using terms such as “proposed use levels” for new food additives or for a new use of an already authorized food additive or “reported use levels” or analytical results in case of an evaluation of an already authorized food additive. All values have to be entered as mg/kg of food.

In January, EFSA released a warning about long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic, which it said is associated with numerous adverse health outcomes in humans, including some forms of cancer. According to the EU agency, the main contributors to dietary exposure to toxic chemicals are rice, rice-based products, grains and grain-based products.

By Inga de Jong