Fool's Flour

I was flipping through The Province last week, and came across the following headline: "White bread back in favour".

I had to do a double take, but the subhead confirmed what the headline said. "New food guide: Half your grain intake should be enriched white flour, says Health Canada, citing folic acid benefit".

Here in Canada, we've been enriching our flour with folic acid since 1998, because folic acid prevents neural-tube birth defects such as spina bifida. It's payed off, because birth defects associated with folic acide have dropped off my more than 30 per cent, by some counts.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but white flour is still bad for us. It doesn't matter how vitamins or minerals you enrich it with - just up your supplement intake, or better yet, eat more produce to get those vitamins and minerals the way nature intended.

My suspicions are that there is some serious PR at work in this piece. After all, all the experts know that eating white flour plays havoc with stable energy levels. The end of the article quotes Bill Jerrery, Canadian co-ordinator of the Centre for Science and Public Interest. His solution is all too obvious: "...simply fortify whole-grain flours with folic acid as well."