Bread and flour with a special infusion of folic acid is the recommended workaround by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) to encourage folic acid intake among women, especially pregnant women. This comes in the wake of the continuing rise in cases of birth defects in the neural tubes among newborns due to folic acid deficiency.
Each year in the UK, the hundreds of babies either born with defects in the brain, the spine, the spinal cord or terminated from the womb bear witness to the failure of voluntary measures. Experts believe that making folic acid more accessible through daily consumption of folic acid enriched bread and flour may help alleviate these cases of defects similar to spinal bifida and incidences of abortion.
While this has been implemented in the US, the UK still has to heed the recommendation from the Food Standards Agency.
According to researchers, "Neural tube defects represent one of the most prevalent groups of birth defects with serious consequences for newborns and their families.
"Although termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly has considerably reduced the live birth prevalence of these anomalies, it is certainly not an optimal solution for a birth defect that is highly preventable with a readily available and low-cost measure, as is the case for neural tube defects with folic acid supplementation or food fortification."
Experts from the Queen Mary University in London found that less than one out of three women have folic acid supplement intake prior to pregnancy. Correspondingly, Public Health England attests that around 85% of women between the ages of 16 and 49 have folic acid levels that are far lower than the daily folic acid dose of 400-microgram recommended by the World Health organisation for women who plan to become pregnant or have the capacity to get pregnant.
Public Health England's chief nutritionist Dr Alison Tedstone says: "Implementing SACN's advice to add folic acid to flour would reduce the risk of birth defects, such as spina bifida, in pregnancy."
Professor Alan Cameron of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) says: "The results of this study support our call for mandatory fortification of bread or flour with folic acid in the UK with the appropriate safeguards such as controls on voluntary fortification by the food industry and better guidance on supplement use.
"Food fortification will reach women most at risk due to poor dietary habits or socio-economic status as well as those women who may not have planned their pregnancy."
The Department of Health says consideration of the findings is underway and a decision will be made correspondingly.
