Go Forth and Fortify

I don't really have a problem with the fortification of commodities. I think its great that folic acid was put into foods and studies suggest that this fortification has decreased the incidence of neural tube defects. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could obtain enough vitamins and minerals from food. But they just don't more often than not and if we can do something as simple as fortifying a basic commodity, like flour, to be healthier I personally am all for that.

What I don't agree with though are all these "nutraceuticals" or foods that aren't even really foods but are just "nutrients". Food is not just a sum of its nutrients. Whole foods are important, as Michael Pollan explicitly points on in his book "In defense of food". I was really annoyed by her discussion of folic acid though. Folic acid is much more biologically available than folate from vegetables. She says she wishes a campaign to eat more fruits and vegetables would have been launched but a person would have to eat ALOT of vegetables to get adequate folate, especially a pregnant woman, and even more so a woman at high risk for NTDs. And it seems doubtful to me that people are going to get folate overdoses. I just feel like she is obsessing over something that is not worth obsessing over because it likely has done more good than harm. Maybe she can afford to buy enough fruits and vegetables to get enough folate from her diet but many people in this world can't.

I do agree with the idea that a single nutrient approach is the wrong approach to take and using nutritional claims to advocate your product seems wrong to me. Nutrition information is constantly changing based on multitudes of studies that come out in the literature. People don't always know how to critically examine studies and food companies jump on whatever ill-supported nutritional fad that comes out of the wood-work. The idea of fast food nutraceuticals is absolutely absurd and disgusting. I also think its sad that fortified cereals have to cost more. Many people who might benefit from these fortified products are likely impoverished and can't afford something like Total, which is much more expensive than other cereals.

I thought her use of those with hemachromatosis to suggest a reason why supplementation could be harmful was unfounded. Yes some people have this problem, but not many. And we can't make decisions for everyone based on these rare people, that would be wrong. I know so many people who eat fortified foods and still have iron deficiencies, so I don't agree with her worries that much based on my personal experience.