LONDON, Dec 14 (KUNA) — British doctors Friday called on the government to go ahead with the fortification of flour with folic acid in a bid to cut pregnancy defects.
Writing in the British medical journal “Lancet”, the doctors from the Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus said that adding the vitamin to the foodstuff could cut the number of pregnancies affected by spina bifida (a bone disease), by around 400 a year in the UK.
Plans to force bakers to add folic acid to bread are currently on hold amid concerns that the proposal could increase the risk of other health problems.
The UK Food Standards Agency, which previously backed the proposal, has indicated that a decision is to be delayed until chief medical officers consider recent publications on the issue.
But in today’s Lancet, medical experts led by Dr. Roger Bayston of the Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus said that two recent papers suggesting a link between folic acid and other health concerns have been misinterpreted.
They point out that a study which has been used to suggest a connection between folic acid and glandular growths does not show that the vitamin poses a risk, as it refers to benign tumours and not cancerous ones.
A second report on the association between folic acid and an increase in colorectal cancer also failed to produce evidence of a link, the doctors suggested.