Essential oils are considered dietary supplements and are regulated by the FDA, but not as food or drugs. As such, they don't need FDA approval but do need to meet FDA regulations to be FDA compliant in order to sell their products. In short, they cannot be FDA approved but they are FDA compliant. Any claims of any products made are required to have FDA compliance language and they are only supposed to use body-function claims. doTERRA as a company is very careful to follow these regulations. However, some individual sellers may not be and doTERRA tries very hard to correct any of these incorrect claims as soon as they find them. You may read more details here.