If you sell sports nutrition products in Europe, or plan to, the regulatory environment is more complex than most markets. Unlike the United States, where the FDA operates a relatively permissive framework for dietary supplements, the European Union applies food law across the entire category — meaning sports nutrition products are subject to the same general food legislation as any other food, with some specific provisions that ESSNA has spent more than two decades working to shape.
ESSNA — the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance — is the trade body at the centre of that work. Understanding what it is, what it does, and what regulatory changes it is currently navigating is relevant for any brand operating in or entering the European market.
What Is ESSNA
ESSNA was founded in 2003. Its founding purpose, as stated in its own materials, was to create "a forum for discussion and vehicle for action on the concerns of the specialist sports nutrition sector in order to secure appropriate and proportionate European legislation on sports nutrition products."
The organisation's membership covers the full supply chain: large international sports nutrition brands, smaller specialist companies, ingredient suppliers, and national trade associations. Named members have included Glanbia Performance Nutrition (which owns Optimum Nutrition, BSN, and Isopure), Nutrabolt, The Hut Group, Bulk, Lonza, Gelita, and NutriSport, among others. ESSNA represents these organisations in dialogue with the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), member state governments, and members of the European Parliament.
The current Chair is Luca Bucchini, who took the role in April 2023 after serving as Vice Chair since 2017. Bucchini is Managing Director of Rome-based food regulatory consultancy Hylobates Consulting and has more than 20 years of experience in food regulatory affairs. He was named NutraChampion at the NutraIngredients Europe Awards 2024. The Vice Chair is Claudia Mucciardi, who is also Associate Director of Regulatory and Quality Compliance for Europe at Nutrabolt.
ESSNA operates a Code of Practice that all members sign up to, committing them to abide by relevant regulations. The organisation has also run a non-compliance campaign for more than a decade aimed at removing products that misrepresent themselves as sports nutrition or contain illegal substances from the European market. In 2025, NSF — a testing, inspection, and certification organisation with more than 80 years of experience operating across 110 countries — joined ESSNA as a member, expanding the Alliance's reach into third-party certification and anti-doping compliance services.
What Does Sports Food Mean Under EU Law
Under EU food law, sports nutrition products do not sit in a separate regulatory category of their own. They fall under general food law, with some products also covered by the Food for Specific Groups (FSG) Regulation — the legislation that governs foods formulated for specific population groups including infants, people with specific medical conditions, and people engaged in physical activity.
The FSG Regulation allows sports foods to be formulated with higher levels of certain nutrients than standard foods — protein, carbohydrates, electrolytes — to accommodate the specific nutritional needs of people who exercise. The broader food regulatory framework still applies to all marketing, labelling, and composition requirements.
ESSNA's core argument, consistently made to European policymakers, is that sports foods must be treated as a distinct category within that framework — not subject to blanket rules designed for general population foods that can misrepresent the purpose and composition of products designed for active consumers.
The Five Regulatory Issues ESSNA Is Currently Working On
1. The Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR)
The NHCR is the main framework governing what health and nutrition claims can be made on food products sold in the EU. It was adopted in 2006 and applies to all food products, including sports nutrition.
ESSNA's Vice Chair Claudia Mucciardi has publicly described the NHCR as "not really fit-for-purpose as it currently stands" for sports foods. The regulation's claim authorisation process has resulted in valid claims on nutrients specifically relevant to athletes being rejected — sodium and glucose being two documented examples — because EFSA's assessments are made against general population health benchmarks rather than the specific needs of people engaged in exercise.
The European Parliament published a non-binding initiative report in early 2024 recommending updates to the NHCR, including the introduction of nutrient profiles that would restrict health and nutrition claims on foods high in fat, sugar, and salt. ESSNA's position is that applying nutrient profiles to sports foods without accounting for their specific composition and intended use would restrict brands from communicating accurate, relevant information to consumers who need it.
The Commission has acknowledged the Parliament's recommendations but has not committed to a specific legislative timeline. The NHCR remains a live issue for the Commission term running to 2029.
2. Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling (FOPNL) and Nutrient Profiles
Front-of-pack nutrition labelling is a proposed mandatory EU scheme that would introduce simplified nutritional scoring visible on the front of food packaging. Several member states already operate voluntary FOPNL schemes — Nutri-Score being the most widely used across France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain.
ESSNA has consistently argued that applying mandatory FOPNL to sports foods using the same criteria as general consumer foods creates a specific problem: products formulated with higher sodium for hydration support during exercise, or higher carbohydrates for endurance fuelling, would receive poor scores under general population health benchmarks. A sports isotonic drink could score poorly under Nutri-Score despite being specifically formulated to meet a genuine nutritional need in active consumers.
The organisation has called for any mandatory FOPNL scheme to include exemptions or adapted criteria for foods formulated for specific population groups, including sports foods.
3. Maximum Permitted Levels (MPLs) for Vitamins and Minerals
The EU has been working toward harmonised maximum permitted levels for vitamins and minerals in food supplements and fortified foods for a number of years. No EU-wide MPLs have been adopted, but the issue has intensified as individual member states have moved ahead with their own national limits.
France has been the most prominent example. French authorities have indicated they intend to implement their own MPL restrictions regardless of whether EU-level harmonisation is achieved. ESSNA identified this in its December 2024 year-in-review as a direct test of whether member states will break from the EU framework, describing it as a departure from decades of EU case law on the free movement of goods.
For sports nutrition brands operating across multiple European markets, divergent national MPLs create a direct compliance problem. A product formulated legally for one market may not meet the requirements of another, requiring either reformulation or market-by-market product variants.
4. EU-UK Regulatory Divergence
Brexit created a formal separation between EU and UK food law, and the two regulatory frameworks have been diverging since the transition period ended. For sports nutrition brands operating across both markets — which includes most major European brands given the UK's size as a consumer market — this divergence is a growing operational issue.
The UK's HFSS (High in Fat, Sugar and Salt) advertising and promotions restrictions represent one area of divergence. ESSNA has engaged in discussions with UK authorities to ensure sports nutrition products — which may contain higher levels of these nutrients for legitimate functional reasons — are not treated the same as general unhealthy food products under those restrictions.
Labelling requirements, health claim frameworks, and ingredient approvals are also tracking differently between the two markets. A brand managing UK and EU compliance simultaneously is managing two distinct regulatory regimes that are likely to continue diverging over time.
5. Novel Foods
The EU Novel Foods Regulation governs ingredients and foods that were not in widespread use in the EU before May 1997. Any such ingredient requires authorisation before it can be sold — a process managed by EFSA that involves a formal safety assessment.
ESSNA's position is that the current process is too slow and too costly for the pace of innovation in the sports nutrition sector. Novel ingredient approvals can take years, during which time brands cannot bring new ingredients to European consumers even when safety data exists. ESSNA's manifesto for the 2024-2029 EU policy cycle calls for a more streamlined approval process that maintains consumer safety standards while reducing the time and cost burden on companies seeking authorisation.
What This Means for Brands
The regulatory picture ESSNA is navigating is not abstract. For a brand building or selling sports nutrition products in Europe, each of the issues above has direct implications for product formulation, labelling, claims strategy, and market-by-market compliance.
A product legally formulated and accurately labelled for the UK market may face different requirements in France. A health claim that is scientifically valid for an athletic population may not be authorised under the NHCR. A novel ingredient with safety data may be unavailable in the EU while approved elsewhere. Sustainability regulations covering packaging, waste, and supply chain disclosure are introducing new compliance requirements on top of existing food law.
Brands that are not tracking these developments, or not engaged in the discussions through ESSNA membership or equivalent channels, are likely to encounter regulatory changes as surprises rather than as anticipated and planned-for shifts.
Our Take
We build product information and digital asset management software for sports nutrition and supplement brands, and the regulatory picture ESSNA is describing shows up directly in how brands manage — or struggle to manage — their product data across markets.
The multi-market compliance problem is, at its core, a product information problem. When France moves on MPLs independently of the EU, or when UK and EU claim requirements diverge, brands need to be able to update product data, labels, and claims at a market level without rebuilding everything from scratch. That requires product information to be structured around markets, not just languages. A serving size, a claim, or an ingredient disclosure may need to be different for Germany than for the UK, and managing that difference systematically — rather than through manual workarounds and spreadsheets — is what determines whether a brand can respond quickly when regulatory requirements shift.
This is why we built Stackcess around a distinction between Market and Language as separate data concepts. A market carries its own regulatory profile. Language is a separate layer. A brand selling into five European markets may need five different regulatory configurations even if only two languages are involved. When ESSNA signals that France is moving on MPLs independently, or that FOPNL criteria may change, that is a product data event as much as it is a regulatory one. Brands that have structured their product information to reflect market-level differences can adapt. Brands that have not find out they have a problem after it has already reached their labels.
We are not suggesting software solves regulatory compliance — it does not. What it can do is ensure that when compliance requirements change, the infrastructure exists to respond at the product level, accurately, across every market a brand operates in.