South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Monday it cited 21 businesses after inspecting sellers of albumin-labeled foods from March 20 to April 3.
The ministry said nine companies violated labeling and advertising rules, and 12 violated the Food Sanitation Act and the Health Functional Foods Act.
At a briefing at the Seoul Regional MFDS office, the agency’s Emergency Response Team for Unfair Food Practices said it found nine firms that sold about 1.8 billion won worth of products by running online ads that could lead consumers to mistake albumin foods for health functional foods.
The ministry said seven firms used phrases such as “fatigue relief,” “helps maintain liver function,” “albumin supplement” and “amino acid supplement,” which could mislead consumers into thinking the products had approved health claims.
It also said two firms promoted ingredient-related effects as if they were proven benefits of the foods, including claims that “albumin helps maintain osmotic pressure in blood vessels” and that low albumin levels “can cause dizziness, edema and ascites.”
The ministry urged consumers not to equate egg-white albumin used as a food ingredient with serum albumin, a medicine.
Serum albumin is a protein that performs specific physiological functions in the blood and is a prescription drug injected, under a doctor’s order, into patients such as those with liver cirrhosis. Egg-white albumin, by contrast, is a food protein derived from egg whites and serves only as a source of nutrients when consumed.
Baek Nam-i, head of the Emergency Response Team for Unfair Food Practices, said the ministry would continue to quickly block the creation and spread of illegal or misleading ads and respond strictly to violations.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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