Vitamin B-6: food or medicine?

BMJ 1998;317:92-93 ( 11 July )

Editorials

Vitamin B-6: food or medicine?

The rules $---$ and the politics $---$ are different

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The recent spat between the House of Commons Agriculture Select Committee and the government's Food Advisory Committee aboutvitamin B-6 was inevitable.¹ The problem started in June 1997when the Food Advisory Committee, on the advice of the Departmentof Health's Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, ConsumerProducts, and the Environment, recommended that vitamin B-6 shouldbe seen either as a food supplement, in which case the daily dosewould be limited to 10 mg, or as a medicine, when it could be available in higher doses. The draft regulations, issued in April1998 with a 26 June deadline for comments, stipulated that overthe counter sales of vitamin B-6 from pharmacies should be limitedto daily doses of 11-49 mg; for doses of 50 mg and over the vitaminwould have to be prescribed. This position was fiercely contestedby the Agriculture Select Committee in its report, convenientlypublished on 23 June. This . . . [Full text of this article]