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All That Folic Acid May Give You Cancer

Fortified cereals, breads, vitamins could overwhelm your liver

By Wesley Oliver,  Newser Staff

Posted Aug 29, 2009 6:53 PM CDT
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(Newser) – Health experts once trumpeted folic acid, but now warn against taking too much of a good thing, the Economist reports. For more than 10 years, aspiring mothers have been told to down double the recommended dose with vitamin pills, and some countries have added folic acid to grain products. It's worked, too: Spina bifida is down in US babies by 31% since 1998. But now experts say excess folic acid could exacerbate certain cancers.

Folic acid, found in foods like spinach and oranges, is converted to folate by the liver, but it can only do so in limited amounts. Sticking to the recommended intake of 0.4 mg is safe, but consuming some cereals can push doses up to 0.8 mg—which has led the EU to halt its grain fortification programs. Pregnant women are still encouraged to take their folic acid pills, but for the rest of us, the Economist says, “the message is clear: eat your spinach.”

Bags of spinach sit on a shelf at a market.
Bags of spinach sit on a shelf at a market.   (Getty Images)
Post cereals are seen on display at a grocery store in Palo Alto, Calif. in this Nov. 5, 2007 file photo.
Post cereals are seen on display at a grocery store in Palo Alto, Calif. in this Nov. 5, 2007 file photo.   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 17 comments
brawne
Aug 30, 2009 12:08 PM CDT
Oh, I've been waiting for this report forever. Folic acid they pushed it on me while pregnant when all you need is in some spinach and beets. Now they're pushing Vitamin D which, no shit you can get ten minutes with no sun screen. Do not--repeat, do not go in a tanning bed. Remember the chicks in Final Destination 3? That is your cell structure after a session in a tanning salon. You can't see it on the outside but you just changed the DNA in every one of your cells at the atomic level--the only level that counts. You have to look at dietary levels this way--They go with social levels. No one took extra folic when they were burning protestants at the stake. Well, we are still ripping off the 'ole fingernail so we don't need any folic acid now. What you think the cells that make up your brain evolve faster than the ones that make your feet?
Doctor-Zaius
Aug 30, 2009 11:37 AM CDT
The law of unintended consequences seems to always bite us in the ass.
jagerhans
Aug 30, 2009 10:46 AM CDT
medicine is a science which is applied before it is discovered ! we heard everything and its opposite since we started to listen to dietetics gurus and physicians , so it's pretty safe to exercise prophylactic skepticism on their statements .

 
European Union • spinach • oranges • folic acid • pregnant women • fortified

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