Nutritional science is blossoming once more and the attempts by national or European Union communities to specify an appropriate diet for long-term health is becoming ever more difficult. The issue of antioxidants is also becoming very complex and it seems likely that over the next decade an integration of nutritional physiology, cell biology and epidemiology will allow us to produce a more coherent overview of the interplay between dietary bioactive molecules and the relative amount of antioxidant micronutrients. Once this understanding emerges then I foresee the need to revise--perhaps substantially--this first attempt by the SCF to produce European figures for the requirements for nutrients.