From next month (13th December) it will become law for flour producers and millers to add artificial folic acid to their products, but as not everyone can process it, what are the possible adverse health implications and could you be affected? It also raises more detailed questions about organic certification in the UK. Read on to find out why health professionals are voicing their concerns (see link, below).
According to the Government’s website, folic acid is being added to flour in order to: “… reduce neural tube defects by 20% in the UK and improve the health of pregnant women”. Data published by research company Statista (2025), shows that this represents an average of about 1% of the population each year in the UK, i.e., registered as live births. Folic acid as a supplement (not in food) has long been available, free of charge, to pregnant women or people hoping to conceive, through the NHS’s ‘healthy start’ programme.
So adding folic acid to nearly all flour except wholemeal flour, is a good thing if it helps people, right? Except…. It might not be the benefit to our daily bread, for the rest of the population, as the Government is claiming. What does this mean for people who are not pregnant, children, developing teenagers and anyone who may have other health concerns, to be subject to the same policy as for pregnant women? According the NHS, you should not take folic acid supplements if “…you’ve had an allergic reaction to folic acid; you have vitamin B12 deficiency or pernicious anaemia (a condition where your immune system attacks your body’s healthy cells); you have a coronary stent (a metal mesh tube inserted into the artery that leads to your heart) or you have cancer” (could that also carry the risk that you may not have symptoms or know if you have any cancerous conditions?). That’s before we start looking at the interaction with other medicines, such as epilepsy treatment.
Why is this an issue?
Even as far back as 2018, concerns were being raised in the British Medical Journal about the effects of folic acid on 40% of the world’s population who cannot process folic acid. As one correspondent wrote: “folic acid is a synthetic form of folate and it is estimated that close to 40% of world’s population is unable to process folic acid. I am part of that 40%. The cause of this is a MTHFR mutation” (see link, below, for more information about the MTHFR gene). A later update (2023) from the University of Warwick in the BMJ, shows that wider health concerns – including surveillance for the effects on dementia, post-fortification and risks for diabetics – continue to be raised.
It also appears that a thorough examination on folic acid as a food additive, was never put up for a full parliamentary debate (with no wider, public consultation for consumers) before being mandated, so there are ethical considerations here, e.g., consumers’ rights, not to say official parliamentary procedures that may not have been followed.
Help is at hand! We’ve done our own research into which local bakers and millers in the Cotswolds are on the case. Before we go more fully into some of the background below, you’ll be glad to know that, with a bit of shopping around, there are other choices (although limited, compared to the sheer volume of processed foods and low-nutrient foods containing synthetic folic acid). Thankfully, other products are available if the adulteration of our Daily Bread (to quote The Real Bread Campaign) and many more products besides, are simply not right for you or your family or match your own standards for eating healthily:
Tips for sourcing proper, natural, unadulterated bread include:
1) wherever you buy your bread or other baked goods, ask if they use non-fortified flour; if you post questions on social media, you may be doing someone else a favour by even raising the issue and no, it appears folic acid is not ‘safe for everyone’ as the NHS’s own website points out!
2) request bread and other products that have been made with one of the following: wholemeal flour, spelt (brown and white) or other ancient grains, such einkorn, rye, millet and barley; alternatives such as chestnut flour, plus imported flours, from countries where folic acid has not made law, e.g., durum wheat from Italy (see link to full list, below). It’s also worth asking bakeries if products such as sourdough use mixed flours, or if they are, e.g., pure wholemeal.
3) gluten free? Sadly, no, as this can often also be packed with additives.
4) if you’re buying a pre-packed loaf, check the label to see if the product list includes: calcium carbonate, iron, niacin and thiamin and folic acid – this is what to avoid, if that is your preference.
Where can I buy folic acid free bread?
Hobbs House Bakery in Nailsworth and Sunshine foods in Stroud are particularly clued up about this issue and respect people’s concerns. At Boulangerie in Cheltenham, they stock a good range of pure, organic, non-mixed flour wholemeal products, although not everything will be without folic acid, so check before you buy. Daylesford Organic stocks a “Good Life” loaf, with oats as the base (note: their pumpernickel loaf is rye flour mixed with wheat and folic acid). Stroud’s Leola bakery also uses white spelt in a lot of their products, so worth asking directly which ones (e.g., non-mixed flour) and they sell a good, organic, white spelt flour in bags. Matthews Cotswold Flour and Shipton Mill sell non-fortified flours if you want to bake your own bread, make pastry, cakes, etc., also Doves Farm – all available directly or from good health shops, but again, check the label. It’s also worth noting that during our research, not every bakery we contacted responded, right across the Cotswolds region. Others were simply unaware that this law was coming into place!
How about organic products?
Unfortunately, in the UK, organic – unless it’s one of the above named types of flour – does not mean the product is folic acid free; interestingly, the Scandinavian Countries and New Zealand, as just a couple of examples, were able to make all organic flour completely exempt from a similar law and one of our unanswered questions is why that didn’t happen in the UK. While the Soil Association’s protests are admirable (see below), that doesn’t help anyone with health concerns or explain why organic wasn’t made an exception here. We’d love to know the reasons behind that one and also, if synthetic folic acid is added to organic flour, is that product’s organic certification still valid – in other words, can this really be considered, then, a truly organic product or should there be a caveat on the label?
Background – concerns about folic acid
What is folic acid? “Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate, which is found naturally in some foods” (Science Direct, 2011). Natural folate, also known as Vitamin B9, is found in leafy greens, nuts, fruit (especially oranges), beans, peas and legumes, plus eggs and meat, among other sources. Folic acid, however, is “not found in nature”, according to the Science Direct paper, rather, it is the common and “quite stable” (what? Why only “quite” stable?) synthetic form of folate used for the formulation of pharmaceuticals and for food fortification. Which brings us back to flour and fortification in food.
Since June this year, Dr. Clare Craig has been running a petition on the Government’s website, stating: “We believe it is unethical to mass medicate the entire population without their knowledge or consent in the hope that a minority group of people might see a benefit” – this petition is open until the 8th of December (see link, below) but in addition to this and e.g., the previously mentioned BMJ letters, medical professionals have been raising concerns about adding synthetic fortification to flour for years. According to retired GP Dr. Liz Evans, the folic acid being added to flour is not vitamin B9 or folate, but a synthetic, oxidised version called Pteroylmonoglutamic acid. Internet searches (including the NHS) regarding the side effects will list, e.g., nausea, abdominal pain/bloating, skin reactions and sleep problems, particularly at high doses. The full list of additives in our daily bread also includes chalk, introduced during wartime deprivations (so why is it still there?), which may also contain aluminium and cannot be removed.
Chris Young, who heads up Sustain’s Real Bread Campaign raises some other interesting points – e.g., that “thiamin and niacin are obtained exclusively from China due to difficult synthesis and low profit margins” and that, as he terms it, “The floury fallout wouldn’t be limited to bread and UPF loaves. It would also affect cakes, biscuits, fish fingers, sauces and everything else into which Britain’s Favourite CarbTM finds its way. Ask anyone with coeliac disease or a wheat allergy and they’ll tell you that’s a lot of foods”. The Real Bread Campaign also successfully called out Marks and Spencer last year, in court, for their claim that some of their bread products had only four ingredients – not the case, as they were loaded with additives.
So it seems this is going to affect any product in future – not just bread – that contains fortified flour – including batter (fish and chips, pancakes) pasta, fish fingers and anything coated in breadcrumbs, soups, sauces, marmite and processed foods which contain thickeners and emulsifiers, to name few. Time to get baking? Up to you – but the main thing as always, is to do your research, get informed and then make your choice. Please get in touch if you have any info you’d like to add, including types of bread and where to buy them from sympathetic bakeries, plus any background including the unanswered questions about organic certification – we’d love to hear from you.
Information Links:
British Medical Journal, concerns, 2018: https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1572/rr-0
British Medical Journal, concerns, 2023: https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1158/rr-1
Evans, Dr. Liz, retired GP: https://www.ukmedfreedom.org/about
NHS Healthy Start: https://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/getting-vitamins/
NutraSafe on chalk and aluminium: https://nutrasafe.co.uk/e-numbers/e170
Real Bread Campaign: https://www.sustainweb.org/blogs/jun25-whats-up-with-the-marks-and-spencer-ms-marketing-department/
Science Direct, 2011: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/folic-acid
Soil Association: https://www.soilassociation.org/news-events-and-resources/latest-news-and-insight/flours-are-being-fortified-with-folic-acid-what-does-it-mean-for-organic/
Statista: https://www.statista.com/topics/5204/births-in-the-uk/
UK Govt. amendment to bread and flour regulations, 2024: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/1162/made
UK Govt. list of added ingredients to flour by law: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/bread-and-flour-labelling-and-composition
UK Govt. petition against folic acid/health concerns: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/769589#main-content
UK Govt. press release on benefits of folic acid for pregnant women: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/birth-defects-prevented-by-fortifying-flour-with-folic-acid