**5. Adverse effects and reactions/safety**

Pomegranate and its products have a long history of use as food or ethnic medicine without adverse effects, and also it has GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status in the USA. The published safety data is limited and no clinical or laboratory adverse events were reported. However, there are some publications on occurrence of allergic reactions when handling or ingestion of pomegranate fruit/seeds due to eliciting a type I hypersensitivity reaction, and thus it is crucial to advise consumers the side effects (McCutcheon et al., 2008).
