Food experts to decide on folic acid move
Food experts will decide today whether folic acid should be routinely added to flour in the UK.
The British Food Standards Agency wants bread to be compulsorily fortified with the B vitamin to reduce birth defects such as spina bifida.
Its Board will today decide whether to support the measure and recommend it to government.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) backs the mandatory fortification of bread via white and brown wheat flour.
This would help cut neural tube defects (NTDs) such as spina bifida, according to scientific research.
The FSA’s recommendations follow a long-running debate about the pros and cons of routinely adding folic acid – a synthetic form of the B vitamin folate – to flour.
Critics fear it could cause practical difficulties for bakers, push up the price of bread and quash consumer choice.
But the FSA has come out in favour of mandatory fortification.
Papers for today’s Board meeting in Nottingham say: “The incidence of NTD-affected pregnancies in the UK is likely to be reduced if mandatory fortification of wheat flour with folic acid is introduced.”
Between 700 and 900 pregnancies are affected by NTDs in the UK every year, with most diagnosed women opting for abortions.
The FSA already advises women to eat extra folic acid when trying to get pregnant.
But this strategy isn’t effective because about half of pregnancies are unplanned.
The FSA wants a series of controls to be brought in if fortification of flour is made compulsory.
It wants wholemeal flour to be exempt from fortification in order to give consumers more choice; products containing folic acid at “nutritionally significant” levels should say so on labels; and controls on folic acid supplements plus the voluntary addition of folic acid to breakfast cereals and low-fat spreads should be introduced.
The FSA also wants monitoring for possible risks such as cancer to be brought in.
Mandatory fortification already happens in the United States, Canada and Chile, where it has cut NTD rates by between 27% and 50%.
A panel of UK scientific experts last year came out in favour of mandatory fortification.
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) said the measure should be brought in alongside controls on voluntary fortification, advice on the use of supplements, and long-term monitoring.
Previous studies had raised concerns that folic acid masked signs of vitamin B12 deficiency in the elderly, which in severe cases can cause neurological damage.
But the SACN’s report, released in December, found no evidence of this happening when folic acid doses were 1mg per day or less.
The FSA’s Board will discuss the issue at its meeting in Nottingham this morning. If it backs mandatory fortification, it will recommend the move to health ministers who will have the final say.
