system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are there any examples of food ingredients used today which were first recognized and regulated as drugs?

I had a colleague assert to me that it would be impossible to gain regulatory approval for a food ingredient, used at any concentration, which has a history of use as a drug.  This doesn't sound correct to me, but I could not think of any falsifying examples.  I have thought of examples in the other direction, like vitamin D supplements vs the prescription, concentrated vitamin D caps, or fish oil vs the concentrate sold as Omacor or Lovasa for lipid lowering.  But in both of those cases the low-concentration food ingredient came first.  Has it ever gone the other way?  Could it?
gpt
Coca Cola kind of. It was first marketed as an cure-all drink. It was sold at pharmacies and told to cure for example headache, hysteria and melancholia. It wasn't until the end of 19th century when Coca Cola dropped the marketing as medicine and switched to marketing as a refreshing drink.