From Dec '26 folic acid is to be added into flour but for some people it could cause severe side effects if they take it. Should there be more debate before we change what we eat forever?

[snowbear22]

Chris Wittey on behalf of the WHO has directed that folic acid will be added to all flour in the UK from this December. Dr Clair Craig is running a campaign against this and is attempting to get a parliament to debate it before mandating folic acid in food.

I'm basing this mainly on her interview on this social media clip and I am not a doctor or involved in the NHS, I would love to hear more of the case for Folic acid in food as I'm sure a lot of medical professionals know a lot more about this than me.
These are the arguments for and against:
Pro's:

1. 200 babies a year can possibly be saved from neural tube defect which is mostly spina bifida.
2. The USA added floic acid to the flour supply and has less spina bifida cases.

Dr Clair Craig arguments against:
1.There are groups of people that should avoid using folic acid- people with cancer because it drives cell replication, people with heart stents as it can cause a stent to re-block and people with undiagnosed B12 deficiency ( around 6,000) as it can cause severe neurological damage. It will be in all flours, even gluten free flour.

2.WHO themselves say that the evidence of helping unborn children is not that strong -it was based on one single trial which gave the control, (placibo group) manganese which can be neurotoxic- and 6 of the control group developed neural tube defects and the control group developed none. The study was deemed unethical after that and never replicated and so all policy is based on that one study.

3.Folic acid is a drug, a synthetic chemical, it is a different molecule to folate- vitamine B9 which you would find in real food such as broccolli, it breaks down differently in the body.

4.Mass medication with no consultation is wrong inherently, it is Government overreach, you should not be mandated by government to take something that you do not consent to, and it is a slippery slope and it is unprecidented that a change that affects so many people has not been allowed any debate in Parliament.

YANBU - Not convinced of the overall good to society if it causes harm to some groups and there should definately be more debate before implementation.

YABU- it would save 200 babies a year from spina biifida and it is overall a good thing.

There's flour in so many foods, some that you wouldn't even think of.

Unless you prepare every food item from scratch with your independent wholemeal flour you will be eating many products that contain flour.

It does depend on what cancer you have.

People with colorectal cancer, prostate cancer & some other types are told to avoid folic acid as it can accelerate the spread.

"The new measures will deliver the NHS £20 million in reduced costs over 10 years. This is in addition to £571 million in benefits to society through an increase in live births, as well as £54 million due to increased labour market participation and £39 million due to parents prevented from leaving the labour market." https://www.gov.uk/government/news/birth-defects-prevented-by-fortifying-flour-with-folic-acid

Folic acid will cost millers 71p per tonne. Each tonne of folic acid will fortify 400 tonnes of flour, which will make about 500,000 loaves of bread.

Even if you don't care about the babies, you've got to see that it makes economic sense?

Besides, small flour producers don't have to comply, so you can still get fancy artisan loaves without folic acid if you look.

My husband has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer so no, I do not want more shit in food for no reason that is likely to make it worse, thanks all the same.

Probably a better way might be to just give it free to people who need it, like women trying to get pregnant? Maybe blood tests to diagnose need and then give the free folic acid to the 200 women who need it.

This is the very definition of 'using a sledgehammer to crack a nut'.

He'd have to eat an entire loaf of bread to get 1mg of folic acid from flour.

I thought it had been in flour for years. Like fluoride in tap water. Both things I have no concerns about

Then just give it to the 200 people that need it not force 60 million to eat it.

Noone in their right minds looks at these figures and thinks forcing it into everything is the way forward. Utter insanity.

I think it’s a good idea, some women may not take supplements for whatever reason but they still have to eat. If you are an adult you can check your food to make sure it doesn’t contain anything you don’t want to consume. Foetuses don’t have that option, especially where mothers don’t know they are pregnant or are non compliant for some reason.

Part of the point is that there are women not accessing prenatal healthcare or even intending to get pregnant.

That would be a sledgehammer! Blood tests with all the cost, people and equipment that would be required? We can't even get women to get their breasts checked! Vs a safe, natural product, so cheap as to be practically free, added to food. It's a no-brainer.

And for the person that raised the MTHFR gene variation, the CDC has studied and shown that there is no evidence that adding folic acid to flour has had any increase in risks, where it's been added to flour for years.

Folic acid is not found in any of the above. That’s folate. Folic acid is synthetic - chemical shit, as a pp so aptly put it. The same as fluoride added to water. Yes it occurs naturally, but the stuff they add is synthetic and often the by-product from phosphate fertilizer manufacturing.

A massive number of women of chlidbearing age don't seem to eat bread now? Noticed it particularly among the mums a bit younger than me.
Maybe more prenatal messaging would be a good thing. Lots of people don't think about stopping drinking/soft cheese/taking vitamins etc until they are pregnant. Even women who plan their pregnancy-some only find out about bottom-feeders etc a quarter way into their pregnancy! Yes, some fall pregnant accidentally and choose to keep the baby, and it might not help them, but maybe a campaign for those of childbearing age in general would help (women who would never choose to have a child can choose to ignore it).

Edit

Where is your source for 40% of the population, or is that speculative? We don’t have any routine genetic testing in this country so I highly doubt this is the actual % of people as this will not be on record for the 70million people of the UK. Sounds like you’ve watched an instagram reel from the alt right pipeline

Babies that would have been born disabled being born healthy. Yeah, I'm on board with this. May also reduce rates of anaemia in those on more beige diets, as folate deficiency is a cause.

There's a very good reason for that. Processed cereals, such as Cornflakes, Rice Crispies etc are processed at high temperatures, which destroys all the vitamins in the grains.

It is legally mandated that the vitamins are replaced, in supplements. I knew this as a kid in the 70s, because my dad worked in the food production industry.

Does anyone know who Clair Craig is, by the way?

Maybe I am misreading this but people on Methotrexate usually have to take high dose (5mg) F.A supplements as the medication depletes folate levels.

But yes you don't take F.A on the day you take Methotrexate.

Shedmistress · Today 20:52

Then just give it to the 200 people that need it not force 60 million to eat it.

Unfortunately, folic acid doesn't cure spina bifida in babies.

Natural sources of folate are better absorbed and metabolised by the body, but if you eat a diet deficient in it, FA can be vital. Unfortunately for people like your husband, looking at the nutritional content will now be important.

Diabetes and gluten intolerant people are already used to it. If it's a benefit to a large majority of society, it'll continue to be added, as it has to bread, for the past 2 years.

YABU. We don't need this anti-vaxxer, anti-science shit crossing the Atlantic.

It's about 1 in 1000 pregnancies. Only 200 or so actually result in live births - the other 80-odd percent miscarry or are terminated (including cases of anencephaly and other presentations incompatible with life).

In addition, folic acid protects against stroke, atherosclerosis and vascular disease. So there's another 400,000 people with a new diagnosis in a year - and about 10.5 million people living with the results.

Then look at diabetic complications where folate could help prevent the loss of toes, feet, legs, agonising pain and death. 9000 amputations a year and 70% of those people will die within within 5 years of that, a survival rate lower than aggressive breast, colon or prostate cancer. 1.25 million in agony. A 50:50 chance of being dead in 5 years from just a diagnosis of an ulcer because it relates to the underlying cardiovascular disease. 13,000 premature deaths from diabetic cardiovascular events a year.

It's not about a couple of hundred kids or women who didn't realise or didn't ever plan to conceive. It's millions.

It may well be that somebody thought saving babies would help people realise it's a good thing. Sounds like appealing to people's self interest would have been more useful than thinking there could possibly be a sense of altruism or cold, hard economics of treating, supporting and burying the potentially preventable sufferers via the medium of a white sliced loaf and some fish fingers.

It’s already added to commercial bread and breakfast cereals so 90% of people are already eating fortified products. Independent mills can supply un fortified flour

Yup. You don't take it on injection days, but you must take it at least once a week in high doses (I was prescribed 6 days of it a week, still had huge side effects and ten years after stopping MTX, I was phoned at 9.30pm by the GP because they'd added a B9 into my routine bloods and found out it was still practically sod all - because of malabsorption).

It's not "just 200 babies". You need to consider the medical terminations for neural tube defects, as well as the spontaneous miscarriages. Also folic acid deficiency in the developing foetus causes other neural tube defects (defects of brain and spinal cord) as well as spina bifida. It's also associated with low birth weight and pre term labour. We've been fortifying food with vitamin D for decades - that's why we don't see rickets anymore.

So rude and dismissive, I suggest you fact check this yourself.
unfortunately my source isn’t an instagram reel, I am in the 12% homozygous (double gene) where it really makes an impact.