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AbstractThe Korean Health/Functional Food Act of 2002 has led to the promotion of research on health/functional foods (HFFs). In order to track government-funded studies on HFFs, a free accessible database (National Research & Development on Functional Food, NaReaDff) has been established by the Korea Food and Drug Administration. About 200 project reports funded by government agencies from 1993 through 2007 were retrieved, using existing government-wide online databases created by the Korea Institute Science and Technology, Evaluation and Planning and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information. In 2008, the database was released with information regarding individual projects and technological achievements for individual ingredients with a vision for HFF development. Overall, government-funded HFF research has primarily involved botanicals including herbs and food plants. The immune system, oxidant stress alleviation, and the cardiovascular system are the three leading health systems being investigated. With regard to the types of studies performed, the majority were in vitrostudies and animal studies with limited numbers of human intervention studies. Government funds have been fragmented for many different ingredients, and this represents a major gap in HFF development. This database is most valuable for evaluating trends in government-funded HFF research. It is also useful to identify research overlaps and gaps and to help research scientists within academia and industry identify potential sources of government funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was performed to evaluate the estimated daily intakes (EDI) of benzoates for the average and high (90th percentile) consumers by age and sex categories in Korea. The estimation of daily intakes of benzoates was based on individual dietary intake data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey in 1998 and on the determination of benzoates in eight food categories. The EDI of benzoates for average consumers of di2erent age groups ranged from 0.009 to 0.025 mg kg[SUP-1] bw day[SUP-1]. For high consumers, the range of EDI of benzoates was 0.195-1.878 mg kg[SUP-1] bw day[SUP-1]. The intakes represented 0.18-0.50% of the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of benzoates for average consumers and 3.9-37.6% of the ADI for high consumers. Foods that contributed most to the daily intakes of benzoates were mixed beverages and soy sauce in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]