Add folic acid to flour - watchdog

Folic acid should be routinely added to all white and brown wheat flour, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has recommended.

The aim of the move is to cut birth defects such as spina bifida. If made compulsory, it would affect flours used to make bread and other products such as cakes and biscuits.

The food watchdog last month agreed to recommend that folic acid should be added to bread or flour. But the FSA's Board members wanted more time to decide exactly which foods would be fortified.

Papers for the next board meeting say mandatory fortification of all white and brown wheat flours should be recommended to UK health ministers.

The folic acid contained in these products should be labelled, the board papers say. And the potential for a labelling threshold should be looked into for products where folic acid levels are not "nutritionally significant".

Around 4.4 million tonnes of flour is produced in the UK at a value of just under £1 billion per year. The FSA's board will consider the issue at Thursday's meeting and finalise its advice to health ministers.

Adding folic acid to all wheat flour rather than just bread has "significant practical advantages", the board papers say.

Wholemeal flour - which has more natural folate than white or brown flour - could be exempt from fortification in order to give consumers more choice, they add. But organic flour may not be exempt, with the board papers saying: "... there is no evidence to suggest that organic white and brown flours contain more natural folate than non-organic flours."

Folic acid is a synthetic form of the B vitamin folate. It is found naturally in some foods including broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, peas, chickpeas and brown rice.

Women who plan to get pregnant are already advised to increase their folate intake because it prevents neural tube defects (NTDs) such as spina bifida in unborn babies. But this strategy is not effective because about half of pregnancies are unplanned.

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