About

I've spent the better part of twenty years watching European gut health science develop, from the early EFSA health claims opinions of the 2000s to the current wave of microbiome research sweeping through research consortia from Wageningen to Milan to Ghent. My work sits at the intersection of science and regulation: translating what the evidence actually says into language that policymakers, industry, and informed consumers can act on. I started andc.eu because I was frustrated. Too many sites either uncritically promote supplements that would never pass an EFSA substantiation dossier, or bury everything in academic jargon that excludes the very people most interested in understanding their gut health. Europe has outstanding microbiome science, coordinated through projects like the Human Microbiome Action Programme, funded through Horizon Europe, carried out across dozens of member states, and most of it never reaches general audiences in any usable form. This site is my attempt to close that gap: rigorous, EU-centred, grounded in the regulatory and scientific frameworks that actually govern what gets claimed and what gets approved in this part of the world.

Catherine Merode