Folic Acid Added to Bread

Many years ago I was on Tommy Boyd's radio phone-in discussing additives in food. Boyd's point, and one that I agreed with him on, was that there are plenty of additives out there that could be used for beneficial purposes, not just to make something look interesting.

My idea, which I must 'big-up' as it received a good deal of positive feedback, was adding vitamins to drinking water in small enough quantities to be undetectable to taste but sufficient enough ti help teenage girls during adolescence. My reasoning being that during their teens, girls become more vulnerable to outside influences regarding fashion and diet at a time when their bodies are undergoing the biggest changes outside of the womb, one of the most popular trends of the time was becoming vegetarian which can deny some young women certain vitamins that are present in meat and are needed for development.

Anyway today comes the news that the Food Standards Agency have agreed recommendations that bread should should be fortified with folic acid to reduce birth defects such as spina bifida.

The use of folic acid cuts the risk of neural tube defects, which affects hundreds of pregnancies a year. Folic acid is a source of folate, a vitamin found in broccoli, sprouts, peas, chickpeas, brown rice and fruit and just as some young women turn to vegetables instead of meat, many turn their backs on fruit and veg. Folate is important for the development of the spine in the first stages of pregnancy and women are advised to eat extra folic acid when trying to get pregnant.
Research suggests that only half of such women adhere to this advice.

Interestingly, in the United States, Canada and Chile where mandatory fortification has already been introduced birth defect rates by up to half.

The FSA board could not agree on whether folic acid should be added to bread or to flour, which would mean it would also be included in biscuits and cakes, although this technicality will be resolved next month. Demographics show that it is the poorest and most educationally underprivileged women who are most at risk of a spina bifida pregnancy but even the poorest families eat bread.

Back in the 19th century all sorts of things were added to bread from chalk dust to brick dust, the idea being that everybody was entitled to some bread, however small the actual wheat content. If adding Folic Acid to bread or flour, without causing health problems for other members of society, reduces the cases of spina bifida then it must be a good thing surely.