For some time, with the continuous improvement of people's living standards, paying for health has become a consumption habit. Health consumption, represented by health food consumption, is showing a growing trend and has become an important part of the high-quality development of the health industry.

Health food is a kind of special food, for which there is no widely accepted unified definition across the world at present. In the United States and European countries, this kind of food is mainly called "health food" and "dietary supplement". In the National Food Safety Standard Health Food of China, health food is defined as food that claims and has specific health functions or for the purpose of supplementing vitamins and minerals, that is, food that is suitable for a specific group of people, has the function of regulating the body, is not for treating diseases, and does not produce any acute, subacute or chronic harm to the human body. Due to the different cultural backgrounds of the East and the West, countries have different understandings of health food, but it is undeniable that health food has become a market focus worldwide.

From the perspective of the characteristics of health food, this category of food has specific functions, such as specific health function or supplements of vitamins, minerals. According to the Food Safety Law and its implementing regulations, the Drug Administration Law and other relevant laws, health function claim is the only basis for distinguishing general food, health food and drugs using the same raw material. In terms of consumer groups, although more and more young and middle-aged people begin to consume health food, the elderly are still the leading consumer group. From the perspective of health food consumption, the e-commerce channel is the fastest growing channel of sales. Relevant enterprises achieved exponential growth in sales through digital transformation and upgrading and online brand promotion. The compound annual growth rate of health food has exceeded 10% for many years. Health food consumption is fast to penetrate and easy to trigger consumption motivation. More and more consumers are willing to pay for health food with various functions, such as protein, dietary nutrition supplements, gastrointestinal health and sports function. There are many categories of health food with wide industrial chain layout, and the market size continues to grow rapidly. The data from TianYanCha show that in the past 5 years, China's health food-related enterprises have shown a steady development trend, with an average annual growth rate of about 30%.

There are also some issues in the development of health food. For example, there is a general lack of consumer awareness and trust. Many consumers are not clear about the positioning of health food, which cause them to think that health food has the function of treating diseases, a phenomenon particularly prominent in the elderly. The lack of top-level design of health food standard system in China leads to the absence of some important standards, and there is inadequate regulatory policy guidance. In addition, time for health food review and approval is a bit long, with duplicated R&D and application for products with the similar formula and same function, which results in enterprise shelves not being updated in a timely manner and restricts the development of enterprises and international competitiveness.

To further play the positive role of health food in promoting the development of health industry, it is necessary to guide the orderly development of health food and strengthen the systematic construction of relevant standards and regulations. Encourage product innovation, promote the classification of health food registration, review, approval and other links, improve the efficiency of review and approval, and cultivate and expand business entities. Strengthen unified online and offline supervision and scientific management of similar unregistered overseas products, enhance application of intelligent management means, and improve efficiency of regulation. Regulate publicity, increase popularization, clarify the ways of consumer rights protection, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.

Source: Economic Daily

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