U.K. Government Advisers Push for Folic Acid to be Added to Flour
In the U.K., a lack of folic acid in foods is a problem. Nearly 2,000 babies have been born with serious side effects such as spina bifida since 1998 due to the government’s failure to add the B vitamin to flour, according to researchers.
About 150 yearly birth defects could have been avoided had the government added it to flour like 78 other countries, including the United States. [1]
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends daily oral iron and folic acid supplementation as it is a facet of vital prenatal care to lower the risk of low birth weight, maternal anemia, and iron deficiency. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges women to take 400 mcg of folic acid per day even a month before getting pregnant.
Yet, nearly 70% of women don’t take folic acid regularly before and during the early stages of pregnancy.
Even without supplementation, researchers say in the study that adding folic acid to flour would have cut the rate of birth defects in the U.K. by 21%.
“Given the evidence from the Medical Research Council Vitamin Study regarding the efficacy of folic acid in preventing neural tube defects, the failure of Britain to fortify flour with folic acid has had significant consequences,” researchers from Oxford University, Public Health England (PHE) and Queen Mary University London say.
“The recent evidence that only 28% of pregnant women in England in 2012 took folic acid supplements at the correct time indicates that, in practice, recommending folic acid supplementation is largely ineffective,” they said.
Recently, U.K. government advisers wrote to ministers asking them to add folic acid to flour, as the Food Standards Agency recommended in 1998…then again in 2000, 2006, and 2009. [2]
Members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) referred to an ever-increasing number of abortions in England and Wales for neural tube defects, with 420 in 2013, up from 390 in 2012 and 299 in 2009.
“It is a public health failure that Britain has not implemented the fortification of flour with folic acid for the prevention of spina bifida and other neural tube defects. This failure has caused, and continues to cause, avoidable terminations of pregnancy, stillbirths, neonatal deaths and permanent serious disability in surviving children,” researchers concluded. [3]
Dr. Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, said:
“Implementing the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition’s advice to add folic acid to flour would reduce the risk of birth defects, such as spina bifida, in pregnancy.
PHE’s analysis shows that 85% of 16 to 49-year-old women have folic acid levels below the new World Health Organization recommendation for women entering pregnancy.
This highlights the importance for pregnant women, and those trying or likely to get pregnant, of taking a daily folic acid supplement of 400 micrograms – before and up to the 12th week of pregnancy.”
Professor Alan Cameron, vice president of clinical quality for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), added that if the government fortifies food with folic acid, it will help women of low socioeconomic status and women with unplanned pregnancies get some of the B vitamin they need to have healthy babies.
In addition to preventing birth defects, a study published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that mothers who take folic acid were 40% less likely to have a child with autism.
Caveat: While increasing folic acid intake (appropriately) may have beneficial effects, it’s worth noting that folic acid is actually not naturally-occurring. Folic acid refers to the oxidized synthetic compound used in supplements and food fortification, as in the case with the U.K. Folate, on the other hand, is a general term for a group of water soluble b-vitamins, and refers to the various tetrahydrofolate derivatives naturally found in food.
So if you want the natural version, go for folate!
Sources:
[1] The Independent
[2] International Business Times
[3] Pulse Headlines
With 90 nutrients needed every day Folate is just one of them. B vitamins are water soluble and only stay in the body from 4-1/2 hours to 6 hours, depending on which B.
When it comes to having children, mother’s-to-be should have a buildup of vitamins at least 3 months before conception. This is especially important for women who were on birth control pills prior. Because B-control pills depreciate the body of minerals. A failure of the FDA to promote this information.
Remember, it is a human impossibility to get all the nutrients from the food we eat.. Since we have poor farm soils, & We only absorb 35% of what we eat at age 15, and it lowers to around 3% of what we eat by age 65 or so; depending on how well we took care of our gut. Even a young cow with 4 stomachs, only absorbs 35% of what she eats and she chews her cuds all day long.
On a similar note, the US, England, and Canada are around 84% deficient in the mineral zinc, which is an awful lot of people. One birth side effect of zinc is Down’s Syndrome, which reflects on the 21st chromosome of our DNA. Copper and SOD are 2 more that work with that chromosome at conception and beyond. Zinc after birth with Cu/SOD will improve the DS child greatly. Another if cleft lip, cleft pallet, and dwarf children, plus anorexia, an adult condition, plus more. so you see there is much more to a lost of nutrients, especially if we continue to eat processed and GMO foods, basicly artifacts of good foods.
Thank you for all this info, I found it very useful.
Folic acid is SYNTHETIC folate. They need to add real folate if they really want to “help” people.