Food and Nutrition Sciences, 2014, 5, 905-913 Published Online May 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/fns http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/fns.2014.510100 How to cite this paper: Koch, A., et al. (2014) The Need for a Legal Distinction of Nutraceuticals. Food and Nutrition Sci- ences, 5, 905-913. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/fns.2014.510100 The Need for a Legal Distinction of Nutraceuticals Annemarie Koch, Sonja Brandenburger, Suzanne Türpe, Marc Birringer * Department of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Studies, University of Applied Sciences Fulda, Fulda, Germany Email: * marc.birringer@he.hs-fulda.de Received 8 March 2014; revised 8 April 2014; accepted 15 April 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract The nutraceutical and botanical terms are often used by the lay press or for marketing purposes to describe health beneficial food, food supplements or herbs. However, there is no common defini- tion of nutraceuticals or botanicals and moreover a lack of regulation that classifies this category. Concerning their health value, it is unclear if they belong to drugs or food. Currently, they fall into a legal limbo between both. This regulatory lack can lead to misuse of claims indicating a health benefit or the misleading of the consumer. This review will focus on current definitions of nutraceutical, botanical, functional food and food supplements with special emphasis on the dif- ferences between the US and European legislation. Some special considerations will be given for Germany, one of the main markets for food supplements in Europe. Keywords Nutraceutical, Botanical, Food Supplement, Definition, Legislation 1. Introduction In recent years, the interest in a healthy lifestyle by prevention (with aid of nutrition) or self-medication with aid of natural products increased [1]. Nevertheless, the number of diseases like coronary heart disease, diabetes or adiposity increased [2]. In this respect, so called nutraceuticals and botanicals have one of the highest market potential in the food sector. This aspect has been recently summarized by an excellent review of Nicoletti [3]. The name nutraceutical is a composition of the terms nutrient and pharmaceutical [4]. Botanicals were often used as a synonym for herbs or herbal products with medicinal potency. Nutraceuticals as well as botanicals can be legally bought in pharmacies, supermarkets or online shops and sold as part of a normal diet. They contain substances, which could be beneficial for health by preventing or treating one or more diseases [5]. In that way, * Corresponding author.