This is the MOST IMPORTANT POST ON THIS BLOG!!!
An article in the New York Times which I include below, referred to folic acid (and other micronutrients) as "the world's healthiest food." Since Sweet Almond Tree is a food blog, I decided to post something about this healthy and all important food!
I kindly ask you to remember to take folic acid daily, and also to take micronutrient (multivitamin) supplements. Micronutrients are a range of crucial vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, vitamin C, the B vitamins (which include folic acid), iodine, iron, zinc and calcium.
January 3, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
To maintain your brain, muscle, bone, nerves, skin, blood circulation, and immune system, your body requires a steady supply of many different raw materials—both macronutrients and micronutrients. You need large amounts of macronutrients—proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. And while you only need a small number of micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—failing to get even those small quantities virtually guarantees disease.
(All the photographs and charts in this post have been "borrowed" from the Internet. I did a Google image search, and there they were, just begging to be borrowed).
A very close and beloved friend who is a biophysicist always reminds me and is very insistent that I take a folic acid supplement daily. I've known about the importance of taking folic acid while pregnant, and of its importance in DNA synthesis. Recently, I pulled some books off the shelf, I visited some Internet sites, and I did my own "in-depth" study of folic acid.
An article in the New York Times which I include below, referred to folic acid (and other micronutrients) as "the world's healthiest food." Since Sweet Almond Tree is a food blog, I decided to post something about this healthy and all important food!
Micronutrients from food sources:
World's Healthiest Food
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras
So what’s the most scrumptious, wholesome, exquisite, healthful, gratifying food in the world?It’s not ambrosia, and it’s not even pepperoni pizza. Hint: It’s far cheaper. A year’s supply costs less than the cheapest hamburger.
Give up? Here’s another hint: It’s lifesaving for children, also lifesaving for women who may become pregnant. If you know of a woman who may become pregnant, make sure she gets this miracle substance.
A final hint: It was a lack of this substance that led to a tragedy that I encountered the other day at a hospital here in the Honduran capital. Three babies lay in cots next to one another with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord.
In the first cot was Rosa Álvarez, 18 days old and recovering from surgery to repair a hole in her spine. She also suffers from a brain deformity.
In the next cot was Ángel Flores, soft tissue protruding from his back.
Closest to the door was José Tercera. His mother unwrapped a bandage on his head, and I saw a golf-ball-size chunk of his brain spilling out a hole in his forehead.
The doctors believe the reason for these deformities, called neural tube defects, was that their mothers did not have enough micronutrients, and particularly didn't take folic acid while pregnat. (Click here to go to: United Call to Action on Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies /World’s best investment for development) These micronutrients are the miracle substance I’m talking about, and there’s scarcely a form of foreign aid more cost-effective than getting them into the food supply.
“It’s unnecessary to have these kinds of problems,” Dr. Ali Flores, a pediatrician and expert on these defects, said as he looked over the three babies.
If a pregnant woman does not have enough folic acid (also known as vitamin B9) in her body at the very beginning of her pregnancy, then her fetus may suffer these neural tube defects. That’s why doctors give folic acid to women who plan to become pregnant.
Equally important is another micronutrient, iodine. The worst consequence of iodine deficiency isn’t goiters, but malformation of fetuses’ brains, so they have 10 to 15 points permanently shaved off their I.Q.’s.
Then there’s zinc, which reduces child deaths from diarrhea and infections. There’s iron, lack of which causes widespread anemia. And there’s vitamin A: some 670,000 children die each year because they don’t get enough vitamin A, and lack of the vitamin remains the world’s leading cause of childhood blindness.
“In the early stages of life, the die is cast,” said David Dodson, the founder of Project Healthy Children, an aid group that fights micronutrient deficiencies in Honduras and other poor countries. “If a child is not getting the right micronutrients, the effect is permanent.”
Nine years ago, Mr. Dodson was simply an American businessman running a 300-employee waste company that he had founded. Then he happened to visit Honduras and, in a hospital, encountered a mother whose newborn baby had a hole in the skull. He learned that negligible amounts of folic acid would prevent such heartbreaking defects — and his life was transformed.
“I had never seen anything in my life that could have so much impact for so little money and be sustainable,” Mr. Dodson said. He and his wife, Stephanie, sold their company and used some of the proceeds to start Project Healthy Children.
The most cost-effective way to distribute micronutrients isn’t to hand them out. Mary Flores, a former Honduran first lady who is active in nutrition, notes that impoverished women can be hard to reach, and even if they are given folic acid pills they sometimes won’t take them for fear that they actually are birth control pills. So micronutrients instead are often added to such common foods as salt, sugar, flour or cooking oil.
Adding iodine, iron, vitamin A, zinc and various B-complex vitamins including folic acid to a range of foods costs about 30 cents per person reached per year. Groups focusing on micronutrients also include Helen Keller International and Vitamin Angels. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has required that flour be fortified with folic acid since 1998. Even in America, with better diets, medical care and widespread fortification, not all women get enough micronutrients, but the problem is far worse in poor countries.
Mr. Dodson notes that it is much cheaper to prevent birth defects than to treat them.
“It’s not a sexy world health issue, but it’s about the nuts and bolts of putting together a healthy population,” Mr. Dodson said. “Putting small amounts of iron, iodine and folic acid in the food supply hasn’t drawn attention the way it does when you treat someone who is sick or in a refugee camp. Until recently, this has been off everybody’s radar screen.”
As the United States reorganizes its chaotic aid program, it might try promoting what just may be the world’s most luscious food: micronutrients.
Give up? Here’s another hint: It’s lifesaving for children, also lifesaving for women who may become pregnant. If you know of a woman who may become pregnant, make sure she gets this miracle substance.
A final hint: It was a lack of this substance that led to a tragedy that I encountered the other day at a hospital here in the Honduran capital. Three babies lay in cots next to one another with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord.
In the first cot was Rosa Álvarez, 18 days old and recovering from surgery to repair a hole in her spine. She also suffers from a brain deformity.
In the next cot was Ángel Flores, soft tissue protruding from his back.
Closest to the door was José Tercera. His mother unwrapped a bandage on his head, and I saw a golf-ball-size chunk of his brain spilling out a hole in his forehead.
The doctors believe the reason for these deformities, called neural tube defects, was that their mothers did not have enough micronutrients, and particularly didn't take folic acid while pregnat. (Click here to go to: United Call to Action on Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies /World’s best investment for development) These micronutrients are the miracle substance I’m talking about, and there’s scarcely a form of foreign aid more cost-effective than getting them into the food supply.
“It’s unnecessary to have these kinds of problems,” Dr. Ali Flores, a pediatrician and expert on these defects, said as he looked over the three babies.
If a pregnant woman does not have enough folic acid (also known as vitamin B9) in her body at the very beginning of her pregnancy, then her fetus may suffer these neural tube defects. That’s why doctors give folic acid to women who plan to become pregnant.
Equally important is another micronutrient, iodine. The worst consequence of iodine deficiency isn’t goiters, but malformation of fetuses’ brains, so they have 10 to 15 points permanently shaved off their I.Q.’s.
Then there’s zinc, which reduces child deaths from diarrhea and infections. There’s iron, lack of which causes widespread anemia. And there’s vitamin A: some 670,000 children die each year because they don’t get enough vitamin A, and lack of the vitamin remains the world’s leading cause of childhood blindness.
“In the early stages of life, the die is cast,” said David Dodson, the founder of Project Healthy Children, an aid group that fights micronutrient deficiencies in Honduras and other poor countries. “If a child is not getting the right micronutrients, the effect is permanent.”
Nine years ago, Mr. Dodson was simply an American businessman running a 300-employee waste company that he had founded. Then he happened to visit Honduras and, in a hospital, encountered a mother whose newborn baby had a hole in the skull. He learned that negligible amounts of folic acid would prevent such heartbreaking defects — and his life was transformed.
“I had never seen anything in my life that could have so much impact for so little money and be sustainable,” Mr. Dodson said. He and his wife, Stephanie, sold their company and used some of the proceeds to start Project Healthy Children.
The most cost-effective way to distribute micronutrients isn’t to hand them out. Mary Flores, a former Honduran first lady who is active in nutrition, notes that impoverished women can be hard to reach, and even if they are given folic acid pills they sometimes won’t take them for fear that they actually are birth control pills. So micronutrients instead are often added to such common foods as salt, sugar, flour or cooking oil.
Adding iodine, iron, vitamin A, zinc and various B-complex vitamins including folic acid to a range of foods costs about 30 cents per person reached per year. Groups focusing on micronutrients also include Helen Keller International and Vitamin Angels. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has required that flour be fortified with folic acid since 1998. Even in America, with better diets, medical care and widespread fortification, not all women get enough micronutrients, but the problem is far worse in poor countries.
Mr. Dodson notes that it is much cheaper to prevent birth defects than to treat them.
“It’s not a sexy world health issue, but it’s about the nuts and bolts of putting together a healthy population,” Mr. Dodson said. “Putting small amounts of iron, iodine and folic acid in the food supply hasn’t drawn attention the way it does when you treat someone who is sick or in a refugee camp. Until recently, this has been off everybody’s radar screen.”
As the United States reorganizes its chaotic aid program, it might try promoting what just may be the world’s most luscious food: micronutrients.
**********************************
Folic acid food sources:
Here is another helpful article: http://www.womentribe.com/health/folic-acid-information-benefits.html
More on Micronutrients:
To maintain your brain, muscle, bone, nerves, skin, blood circulation, and immune system, your body requires a steady supply of many different raw materials—both macronutrients and micronutrients. You need large amounts of macronutrients—proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. And while you only need a small number of micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—failing to get even those small quantities virtually guarantees disease.
(All the photographs and charts in this post have been "borrowed" from the Internet. I did a Google image search, and there they were, just begging to be borrowed).
