Six Chinese Medicines are Approved as Food Ingredients in China! Nine More Substances Expected to be Added

Jan 07, 2020 from CIRS by Lena Ma

1. Six Chinese medicines are approved as food ingredients

On 6 January 2020, National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China (NHC) approved six new substances which can be conventionally regarded as both foods and Chinese medicines. In other words, from now on, these Chinese medicines can be used as food ingredients in China.

The newly approved 6 substances are as follows:

S.N.	Latin name	Part	Note
1	Angelica sinensis(Oliv. )Diels	root	Use as spice and condiment.
2	Kaempferia galangal L.	rhizome	Use as spice and condiment.
3	Crocus sativus L.	stigma	Use as spice and condiment, also known as "saffron" in spice and condiment.
4	Amomum tsao-ko Crevost et Lemaire	fruit	Use as spice and condiment.
5	Curcuma longa L.	rhizome	Use as spice and condiment.
6	Piper longum L.	ear	Use as spice and condiment.

Note: When the substances produced and operated as foods, they should comply with the Food Safety Law.

2. Nine substances expected to be regarded as both food and Chinese medicine

At the same time, NHC issued a Notice to carry out the pilot production and operation of nine substances (details are as follow). China authorities will further study the feasibility of treating the following substances as both food and Chinese medicine after the pilot study.

S.N.	Latin name	Part
1	Codonopsis pilosula（Franch.）Nannf.	root
	Codonopsis pilosula Nannf. var. modesta (Nannf.) L.T.Shen
	Codonopsis tangshen Oliv.
2	Cistanche deserticola Y.C.Ma	succulent stem
3	Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo	stem
4	Panax quinquefolium L.	root
5	Astragalus membranaceus（Fisch.）Bge.var.mongholicus（Bge.）Hsiao	root
5	Astragalus membranaceus（Fisch.）Bge.	root
6	Ganoderma lucidum （Leyss. ex Fr.）Karst.	sporocarp
6	Ganoderma sinense Zhao, Xu et Zhang	sporocarp
7	Cornus officinalis Sieb.et Zucc.	flesh
8	Gastrodia elata B1.	tuber
9	Eucommia ulmoides Oliv.	leaf

Reference:

NHC Notice (No.8, 2019)

NHC Notice (No.311, 2019)

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