The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on the 21st that it will suspend the sale of 13 health functional foods manufactured by AmorePacific and Cosmax Bio due to violations of ethyl acetate standards. Ethyl acetate was detected in health functional foods that used and manufactured green tea extracts that were imported and reported as not using ethyl acetate.

Ethyl acetate is a food additive that has a fruit flavor and is used to add flavor to food or extract specific ingredients from food raw materials. Functional ingredients for health functional foods such as green tea extract, or tea, coffee, and edible oils are widely used in manufacturing them.

When preparing green tea extract, water, alcohol, and ethyl acetate can be used as extraction solvents, and ethyl acetate is set at 50.0 mg/kg (ppm) or less.

However, the amount of ethyl acetate detected in these violating products was not considered to cause harm to the human body.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety converted the amount of ethyl acetate detected in 13 nonconforming products in consideration of daily intake for each product. Since then, it has been compared with the daily intake of ethyl acetate (ADI) set by the Joint Food Additives Expert Committee (JECFA) of the International Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

As a result, the amount of ethyl acetate detected was about 0.0002 to 0.0104% of the daily intake permissible dose (25 mg/kg·bw/day), which was not considered to cause harm to the human body.

Considering the daily intake of ethyl acetate, it is not harmful for adults weighing 60 kg to consume up to 1500 mg daily.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety asked consumers who purchased the product to stop eating it and return it to the place of purchase. Products to be recovered include “Metagreen Slim Plus” manufactured by AmorePacific, “Metagreen Slim Up,” and “Metagreen Boostershot 7 Days.”

In addition, they include “MyFit S Blood Sugar & Pink Fit Diet” manufactured by Cosmax Bio, “Physician-made evidence-based diet boosters,” “Elite Jung,” and “Ballanit Blood Sugar Cholesterol Total Solution Banana & Cathekin.”