Jane Clarke, The Times nutritionist, puts the issues in perspective.

Will a Brussels curb or ban be good or bad news for our health?

I find this a tough question to make a quick response to, as the issues are very complex on both sides of the argument.

While I can understand how we need to regulate carefully, improve the legislation, increase the level of correct information given to consumers who want to buy these health remedies and supplements, I think the proposed ban on hundreds of high-dose supplements will impinge on our human health rights. Consumers deserve more from the EU.

I agree with the sentiment of the EU and the FSA that we need better regulation to get rid of the bad players in the supplement world, curb the ones that make wild claims about what remedies can do for you, and stop journalists and the media putting out misinformation based on very patchy and frequently PR-biased research (and there is a LOT of this around), but taking a hammer to this issue and banning the sale of supplements and remedies isn't the way to go about improving our health.

What sort of natural remedies are likely to disappear from the shelves if the new laws are upheld?

An estimated 5,000 vitamin and mineral supplements will become illegal from August 1 this year, and will disappear from our shops. Any shopkeeper who continues to sell them will be committing a criminal offence.

Minerals such as boron and selenium, and numerous forms of vitamins A, C and E - many of which have been on sale for decades without problem, will be banned.

The EU is trying to bully supplement manufacturers into providing a dossier about the safety issues (among other things) concerning the single ingredients found in supplements, but according to the director of the National Association of Health Stores, Ralph Pike, it costs about £300,000 to compile an acceptable scientific dossier on any single ingredient.

Many popular multivitamin supplements contain up to 17 separate ingredients, so you can see how uneconomic it would be for any small to medium-sized manufacturer to compile the required dossier on such products.

Another problem is that the EC directive sets maximum levels of nutrients for supplements, and in many cases these are ridiculously low.

As a result, high-potency vitamin C, to give but one example, will also be banned. The common general multivitamin supplements, which usually contain small doses of vitamins such as vitamin C, should stay.

Do we need tighter controls on natural remedies, vitamin supplements and mineral plant extracts?

Yes, we do. They can cause some serious health issues if taken incorrectly, such as kidney stones if you overdose on calcium, or mouth ulcers if you overdose on vitamin C, though this is a rare occurrence.

Instead of banning supplements, we should be lobbying and educating practitioners and retailers to give better information and advice about what is appropriate for someone to take.

We should be concentrating all our efforts into getting more information out there about the downside of overdosing, and of going above the "safe" limit, so that consumers are better informed. People have a right to take nutrients and remedies.

The proposed ban isn't the way forward - and it's pretty hypocritical when you see how much junk food is served to our kids in schools and how lousy and incorrect is a lot of the nutritional information given out by stuck-in-the-dark-ages doctors.

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