Independent report

UKNHCC annual report 2025: foreword, finance and biographies

Published 9 March 2026

Chair’s foreword

It is my pleasure to introduce the fourth annual report of the UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee (UKNHCC) which covers the work of the committee in 2025. This is my fourth report as chair of UKNHCC.

UKNHCC assessed one health claim application in 2025. In September 2025, an application was received for an Article 13(5) health claim application applicable in Great Britain. The claim was that ‘green kiwifruit powder contributes to the maintenance of normal defecation’. UKNHCC concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship has not been established between the consumption of green kiwifruit powder and maintenance of normal defecation, based on the proposed conditions of use.

UKNHCC member appraisals were completed in 2025. All members have been reappointed for another year.

I would like to give my sincere thanks to members of the committee and the secretariat for remaining committed to the work of UKNHCC in 2025.

Emeritus Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait, chair

About the committee

The role of UKNHCC is to provide scientific advice on, and risk assessment of, the evidence for nutrition and health claims. It provides scientific opinions to the UK government and the devolved governments.

You can find further information about UKNHCC on the UKNHCC webpage, including:

• terms of reference
• code of practice
• a framework for the evaluation of evidence submitted for the substantiation of nutrition and health claims
• updates on the work of UKNHCC, including meeting minutes, which are detailed in the ‘UKNHCC meeting papers’ folder, linked to in the ‘UKNHCC meetings’ section
• register of members’ interests - an updated version of the register of members’ interests is published before each UKNHCC meeting
• scientific opinions

The role of the secretariat and official observers is set out in the code of practice. The secretariat and official observers are listed in relevant publications.

Remuneration and committee finances

The amount paid to committee members for fees in 2025 was as follows:

• the chair received a fee of £550 per full day meeting and £500 per reading day
• members not chairing received £500 per full day meeting and per reading day
• members who did not attend a meeting but provided comments before or after the meeting also received a reading fee based on the time they spent

The cost of the committee fees and expenses for the calendar year 2025, excluding secretariat resources, was £8,300. Costs were met by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

UKNHCC membership and member biographies

Details of current UKNHCC membership can be found on the UKNHCC webpage. Biographies of UKNHCC members for 2025 are provided below.

Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait (chair)

Emeritus Professor of Human Nutrition, Norwich Medical School, the University of East Anglia. Her main research interests are mineral metabolism and requirements. She has served on a number of national and international advisory committees, including:

• Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) Iron Working Group (2001 to 2010)
• European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens and the EFSA Health Claims Working Group (both 2009 to 2018)
• USA National Academy of Sciences Committee on Harmonization of Methods for Estimating Nutrient Intake References (2017 to 2018)

She is currently a member of:

• UK Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (2020 to 2026)
• SACN (2021 to 2029), SACN’s vitamin D Working Group (since 2022) and a SACN representative on the Project Board of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey
• UK Food Standards Agency Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) and SACN representative on COT (since October 2025)

She was chair of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO) expert group on nutrient requirements for children aged 0 to 36 months (2020 to 2024).

She was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition in 2024 and an Honorary Fellow of the UK Nutrition Society in 2021.

Dr Robert Boyle

Clinical Reader in Paediatric Allergy, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

His clinical training is in paediatric allergy and his clinical trial and evidence synthesis work investigates ways to prevent the development of allergic conditions such as eczema and food allergy, using nutritional and non-nutritional interventions during pregnancy or the first year of life, and research integrity in the field of infant nutrition.

He is editor in chief of the UK journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy. He works for Cochrane as a senior editor and is a member of SACN and its subgroup on maternal and child nutrition.

Dr Francesca Crowe

Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the associations of the intake of certain foods and nutrients with the risk of developing diseases such as cardiometabolic disease, cancer and digestive diseases in large electronic healthcare data sets. She also has an interest in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts to date in the field of epidemiology. She also has an interest in nutrition and health claims and has spent time as a civil servant in New Zealand. Her main role there was to evaluate systematic reviews that have been provided by New Zealand food industry to make self-substantiated health claims on foods.

Professor Alison Gallagher

Professor of Public Health Nutrition and Head of Doctoral College at Ulster University. Her research interests are in obesity, including:

• development of risk factors for disease
• low-energy and non-nutritive sweeteners and their potential impact on health
• physical activity and health (including implementation of lifestyle interventions at key stages across the lifecycle)

A registered nutritionist (public health) and Fellow of the Association of Nutrition, she is:

• a member of the UK and Ireland Nutrition Society
• currently chair of the Nutrition Society Irish Section and editor-in-chief for the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society

She is also an expert member on the Scientific Advisory Panel on Sweeteners supported by the International Sweeteners Association (ISA) and chairs the Editorial Advisory Board of the Nutrition Bulletin. She is an advocate for the European Nutrition Leadership Platform (ENLP), having first participated in the ENLP seminars in 1997 and being involved with this international leadership programme ever since, being the current chair and president of the ENLP Board.

Dr Darren Greenwood

Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Leeds. His research focuses on the development and application of statistical methods in nutrition science and perinatal epidemiology. His expertise includes:

• meta-analysis of observational studies
• pooling individual participant data across separate studies
• correcting for measurement error and incomplete data in nutrition epidemiology

Recent work includes:

• applications to maternal and child nutrition
• randomised controlled trials of colorectal cancer screening
• intensive longitudinal modelling of long COVID-19 symptoms

He has authored over 250 original peer-reviewed research articles. He is a member of SACN and its framework and methods for evidence evaluation subgroup and working groups on nutrition and maternal health and on vitamin D. He was previously director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nutritional Epidemiology and is a regular statistical reviewer for a number of leading international journals.

Professor Marina Heinonen

Professor of Food Safety (Chemical Food Safety) at the University of Helsinki, Finland and Head of the Department of Food and Nutrition. Previously she has held a position as Professor of Functional Foods (2002 to 2007). Her main interests involve:

• reactions in foods, such as oxidation
• food compositional analyses
• functional properties of plant phenolics

In 2007 to 2012 she was a member of the Research Council for Biosciences and Environment at the Academy of Finland. She has been serving as an evaluator for research grants at the European Research Council since 2017 and held the same position between 2010 and 2015.

She has been a scientific expert member at EFSA since 2004, including past membership of EFSA’s:

• Scientific Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources Added to Food (2004 to 2006)
• Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (2006 to 2009, 2012 to 2018)
• Working Group on Health Claims (2007 to 2018)

At present she is a member of the EFSA Novel Foods Working Group (since 2006) currently also including evaluation of safety of nutrient sources.

Professor Harry McArdle

Emeritus Professor, Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen. He was Deputy Director of the Rowett Research Institute, University of Aberdeen, until his retirement in 2015.

He is a Registered Nutritionist (Nutritional Sciences) and a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Biology and of Medicine and was recently (2024) elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Nutrition Society.

He was a member and vice-chair of EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens and Novel Foods Working Group (until 2025).

He remains a member of the Task Force for Chemicals, for cannabidiol and the core group for Novel Foods. He is also a member of the Biomarkers of Excess Working Group for EFSA.

Previously he has served on other committees and working groups including the:

• EFSA Dietary Reference Values Panel (2015 to 2024)
• EFSA Health Claims Working Group (2015 to 2024)
• SACN (2009 to 20219)
• Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (2018 to 2024)

He was chair of trustees of the Academy of Nutrition Sciences until October 2021 and a trustee until December 2022.

Professor Anders Sjödin

Medical Doctor and Emeritus Professor of obesity research, Department of Nutrition, Exercise, and Sports, Copenhagen University, Denmark. His main research interests are related to prevention and treatment of obesity. This includes control of appetite and regulation of body weight, energy and substrate metabolism. He also has a background in sport nutrition and exercise physiology.

Between 2012 and 2018 he served as a member of the Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens as well as in several working groups, including the Working Group on Health Claims, for EFSA.