Celestinbogen sets out what the European register of claims permits for potassium and what it permits for calcium — and which questions it expressly leaves open.
To the reportThe Celestinbogen report runs to around forty pages: the physiology of the muscle cell in four stages, two separately kept mineral chapters with intake tables, a glossary and a list of sources. What is delivered is a PDF file, immediately after payment is received, with no subscription and no follow-up costs.
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The following three fields belong together but mean different things. The first two each describe a mineral and each reproduce one authorised claim. The third field merely explains where these sentences come from; it does not itself contain a health claim.
Around ninety-eight percent of the body’s potassium lies inside the cells. An adult carries about a hundred and forty grams of it, distributed above all across skeletal muscle and liver. The difference in concentration between inside and outside is the basis of the electrical voltage at the cell membrane.
Rich sources are dried apricots, white beans, potatoes and spinach. The EU reference value for daily intake is 2,000 mg.
Pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
About ninety-nine percent of calcium is bound in bone substance. What remains is spread across blood plasma and the intercellular space — and it is exactly this small share that acts as the signal-giver in the muscle fibre. In the cytoplasm of the resting fibre the concentration is extremely low.
Appreciable amounts are found in hard cheese, yoghurt, sesame, kale and calcium-rich mineral water. The EU reference value is 800 mg per day.
Pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 maintains a closed list of permitted health claims. Each entry names exactly one nutrient, exactly one wording and the conditions under which it may be used.
One of these conditions is the minimum amount: a food must contain at least fifteen percent of the reference value per hundred grams for the associated claim to come into consideration at all. This field does not itself reproduce a claim but only describes the procedure behind it.
A voluntary movement does not begin in the muscle but further up. A nerve impulse runs along the motor neuron to the motor end plate, acetylcholine enters the synaptic cleft there, and the membrane of the muscle fibre thereupon changes its electrical charge for a few milliseconds. Only afterwards follows what becomes visible from outside as movement.
This sequence is the reason physiology textbooks describe the ions involved in separate chapters. They act at different points of the chain: one at the voltage across the membrane, the other at the protein complex inside the fibre. Anyone who pulls both together into one sentence loses exactly this distinction — and the European register of claims makes it too, by keeping two separate entries.
The orders of magnitude help with placing things. Potassium is by quantity the dominant cation inside the cell; calcium is so rare in the cytoplasm of the resting fibre that its concentration is given in micromoles. Neither is coincidence, but the precondition for a brief rise being perceptible as a signal at all.
Inside a resting skeletal muscle fibre the potassium concentration is about 150 millimoles per litre, outside around four to five. For sodium the ratio is reversed. Because the membrane at rest is far more permeable to potassium than to sodium, a voltage establishes itself that measures around minus ninety millivolts.
This state is maintained by a transport protein in the membrane which, consuming ATP, carries three sodium ions outward and two potassium ions inward. The process runs continuously and costs a considerable share of the basal metabolic rate. Without it the concentrations would slowly equalise and the voltage would disappear.
Pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
When an action potential runs along the fibre, it penetrates all the way inside through tube-shaped invaginations of the membrane, the transverse tubules. A voltage-sensitive protein sits there, registers the change and opens a channel of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Calcium streams out of this store into the cytoplasm; within milliseconds the concentration rises about a hundredfold.
The released ions bind to troponin C. The complex changes its shape, the tropomyosin lying on it shifts, and the binding sites on the actin filament are exposed. Only now can the myosin heads engage. As soon as the signal sequence ends, a second transport protein pumps the calcium back into the store — likewise consuming ATP.
Pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
The two sentences quoted above are not a summary of this page but official text. They appear in the annex to Regulation (EU) No 432/2012, each on its own line, each with its own file reference from the preceding EFSA opinion. Rephrasing, shortening or combining them into one joint statement is not provided for with health claims.
For one of these claims to be allowed to appear on a package, two things must hold: the entry must exist for exactly this nutrient, and the product must contain the required minimum amount. For potassium that means at least 300 mg per hundred grams, for calcium at least 120 mg — fifteen percent of the respective reference value in each case.
What the entries do not do is just as clearly regulated. They say nothing about diseases, name no speed of action and prescribe no amount that anyone should take. They describe a documented contribution to a normal bodily function — no more, but no less either.
Everything on this website is general information and does not take the place of medical advice, examination or diagnosis. Anyone with symptoms, on long-term medication or with a known existing condition should seek medical advice before making any change to their diet or their intake of minerals. Dietary supplements are no substitute for a varied diet and a healthy lifestyle; the daily serving stated on the package must be observed. Products of this kind belong out of the reach of young children.
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