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December 22, 2005 Campaigns to Raise Folic Acid Awareness Two national campaigns are raising awareness about folic acid’s role in preventing birth defects. January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month, and Jan. 9-15 is National Folic Acid Awareness Week. Folic acid, a B vitamin the body needs to make healthy cells, can help prevent up to 70 percent of some birth defects, health service officials say. However, about two-thirds of the women in the U.S. don’t consume enough folic acid, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Birth defects affect about 120,000, or one in 33, newborns in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC. Birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality and a major cause of illnesses and long-term disability. The lifetime cost of care for the children born with birth defects in a single year totals $6 billion, the CDC estimates. The U.S. Public Health Service recommends all women of childbearing age consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily. Babies are less likely to have major birth defects if their mother has enough folic acid in her body before and while she is pregnant, the CDC says. The vitamin is available as folic acid pills or in multivitamins. You can find folate, the form of folic acid that occurs naturally in foods, in green leafy vegetables, broccoli, dry edible beans, lentils, peanuts, liver and citrus fruits. Folic acid also is in enriched bread, pasta, cereal, cornmeal, farina and rice. “Eating a well-balanced diet that includes fruit and vegetables, grains and beans is important to health for many reasons,” says Julie Garden-Robinson, North Dakota State University Extension Service food and nutrition specialist. A study by the Minneapolis-based Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition shows 62 percent of the folic acid in the American diet comes from grain foods, including breakfast cereals. “Realistically and practically, grain foods are playing a larger role in delivering folic acid to future mothers,” says Ellen Huber, North Dakota Wheat Commission communications director. “Grain foods enriched with folic acid have proven important to the birth of healthy babies among women who unexpectedly find they are expecting and who therefore haven’t been taking vitamin supplements or eating balanced meals.” The Food and Drug Administration has been requiring white bread and other enriched grain products be fortified with folic acid since January 1998. The FDA chose grain products because flour millers already were adding iron and vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin and niacin to them. The FDA also reasoned that folic acid in grain products would have a large impact on public health because those products are staples in people’s diets. White bread and pasta have twice the folic acid of their typical whole-wheat counterparts, Huber says. Folic acid isn’t just beneficial for women who may become pregnant, though. “It’s good for everyone,” Garden-Robinson says. “Meeting our folic acid needs may reduce our risk for heart disease, certain types of cancer and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease.” Folic acid has no known toxic level. That means someone eating a bowl of cereal fortified with 400 micrograms of the vitamin and other foods rich in folic acid, plus taking a folic acid supplement with 400 micrograms, wouldn’t be getting too much. However, consuming more than 1,000 micrograms of folic acid a day doesn’t benefit most women, CDC says. For more information on folic acid, visit the CDC Web site at www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/index.htm or the Wheat Foods Council Web site at www.wheatfoods.org/pdfs/folicacid_white_paper.pdf. To learn more about food and nutrition, visit the NDSU Extension Service Web site at www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/food.htm. ### Source:
Julie Garden-Robinson, (701) 231-7187, jgardenr@ndsuext.nodak.edu |
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North Dakota State University |
