Actual situation of the weight control in the Japanese functional indication food and food for specified health use

Controlling obesity, which is one of the risk factors leading to diabetes and heart problems, is important. It is desirable to promote an improvement in this condition via appropriate dietary management and moderate exercise. However, modern social life makes consistent dietary management and exercise challenging. The number of obese individuals in Japan has been increasing, and is of particular concern among working populations aged 30 years or older. Increase in social security budgets including medical costs for the elderly has become a serious problem, and the Japanese Government has called for the prevention of life-style related diseases such as obesity1. However, several generations of working populations have been unable to continue dietary management and moderate exercise consistently. Therefore system using food for specified health purposes and functional indication foods for obesity improvement has been established. The major difference between food for specified health use and functional indication foods is that the former needs national agency approval and the latter does not. Foods for specified health use are foods authorized based on national-level evaluation and functional indication foods are those that are reported to meet the criteria of scientific basis of functionality. We cannot claim to heal and prevent diseases using this system of food, as we can with medications. However, in individuals at the borderline of health and disease, the beneficial effect of food on mild obesity and mild fasting blood sugar can be seen. Thus, treatment of individuals with disease is done using medications, and treatment of borderline individuals is done using functional food and improvement in lifestyle, preventing progression to disease. Functional ingredients in food which are known to cause obesity improvement and improvement in fasting blood sugar are mostly constituents found in natural products. In this review, we introduce functional ingredients in food and their functions. Weight control and suppression of body fat