Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, when considering the issue of fortification of flour with folic acid, they plan to take into account the distinction between folic acid and methylfolate, and the gut’s role in converting folic acid and food folate to methylfolate.

In its 2006 report ‘Folate and Disease Prevention’ the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition concluded that overall there was insufficient data in humans to assess the long term effects of exposure to unmetabolised folic acid as a result of the limited capacity of the gut to convert folic acid into methylfolate (or 5-methyl tetrahydrofolic acid).