A Perspective on Risk-Benefit Assessment of Foods and Drugs

Abstract

Risk-benefit assessment (RBA) is a relatively new discipline that integrates scientific knowledge on nutrition, toxicology and microbiology with human epidemiology, using common health metrics. Its possible applications in food safety or drug recommendation (How do we judge a food ingredient to be worth/safe to use? How do we choose among different medications for a given condition? etc.) confer it an important role in modern society. The article below aims at offering a short perspective on what is currently available for use, as well as on the specificities of the tackled problems, and also some new ideas to further improve the frameworks.