Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, has stirred up a furore over folic acid – aka vitamin B9 – being added to our foods. This comes after the UK government announced that, from December, the addition of folic acid to non-wholemeal wheat flour would be mandatory for all manufacturers.

Lowe is not impressed. As he put it on X earlier this week:

‘I do not believe that the government should be adding folic acid to our bread. Food should be as natural as possible. That is not a controversial position. We are now in the absurd situation where politicians think they should decide what goes into the everyday food of millions of British people.’

Lowe’s intervention is more than a little misleading. Politicians have actually been deciding what goes into our food for years. Indeed, the reformulation of our favourite foods to strip out as much fat, sugar and salt as is humanly possible has left many of us missing what food used to taste like before the Men from the Ministry got their hands on it. Moreover, the food we eat is a long way from ‘natural’. We didn’t spend millennia on selective breeding or combining foods from different parts of the world to make something new for nothing.

What’s more, dozens of other countries have been adding folic acid to their food for years and the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) recommended it as long ago as 2006. This is hardly a decision taken in haste. The aim is to reduce the number of children born with neural tube defects. As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains:

‘The neural tube is a narrow channel that folds and closes during the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy. As the neural tube forms and closes, the upper part helps form the baby’s brain and skull. The lower part of the neural tube helps form the spinal cord and back bones. Neural tube defects (NTDs) are problems that occur when the neural tube does not close properly.’

Taking folic acid supplements substantially reduces the risk of such defects, including spina bifida, which can lead to lifelong disability.

Why not, as many on social media are demanding, just advise women who want to become pregnant to take folic-acid supplements? That already happens, of course. But as the SACN report back in 2006 noted:

‘In this country about half of all pregnancies are unplanned. So by the time the pregnancy is recognised the developmental window for the neural tube, when folate requirements are high, has passed. No other countries that have implemented policies which rely only on advice to take folic acid supplements have been effective at reducing NTD rates.’

By contrast, SACN noted, ‘mandatory fortification policies in the US, Canada and Chile’ have led to ‘substantial reductions in the incidence of NTD-affected pregnancies’.

This is not to say that folic acid is not without its risks. Firstly, it is thought that having high levels of folic acid can mask vitamin B12 deficiency. Tests can suggest everything is hunky dory while the ongoing nerve damage caused by a B12 deficiency continues. This can be a particular problem with older people. Another suggestion has been that it can increase the risk of cancer. Although a large study published in 2013 found no significant differences in cancer occurrence between those taking folic acid supplements and those who weren’t.

Besides, the amount of folic acid that will be added to flour is small – enough to top up deficiency in pregnant women without causing other problems. Although patients receiving folic-acid supplements for other reasons should be a little cautious.

Other than that, there really shouldn’t be a problem adding folic acid to flour. And the benefits of fortification, including the avoidance of life-changing defects, are crystal clear.

This online furore seems to be almost totally divorced from the facts about folic acid. Some of Lowe’s supporters have even vowed to boycott Marmite, which has been fortified with folic acid since the 1930s, without ever being ordered to by the government.

As silly as some of this sounds, the panic speaks to something profound: a deepening scepticism towards the authorities and their use and abuse of science. This scepticism has been growing for a long time. But it went into overdrive after the government invoked ‘the science’ to justify the highly repressive Covid lockdowns.

While I remain sceptical of the benefits of locking down society for months on end as a means of tackling a novel virus, that doesn’t mean that everything the authorities do or tell us should be treated with suspicion. When it comes to folic acid, we could just as easily accuse them of being excessively cautious. Thousands of children have been born with defects that could have been prevented if we had followed the lead of the US and Canada earlier.

I don’t think you need to worry about folic acid in your bread, while people wanting to have kids should welcome it. And if you really don’t want to consume this nasty, government-mandated ‘poison’, there’s an easy way to avoid it. Just eat wholemeal bread, which doesn’t need supplementation because it already contains enough folate. You can rest easy – and it might keep you regular, too. Just as long as it keeps you off my social-media timeline.