Though the market for health food with plant extracts is steadily growing, harmonized Europe-wide legal requirements for those substances are still missing. This paper aims to raise awareness of the challenging issues involved. The large variety of plant extracts, important ways to influence their quality, and aspects of quality control as well as the current legal basis for classification and evaluation of botanical extracts are discussed. Emphasis is placed on issues such as adulteration, labelling requirements and criteria for assessing extracts as potential novel food. Furthermore, it is shown that the complexity of plant extracts requires modern non-target methods which are able to detect targeted as well as unknown compounds with functional or bioactive properties.