Dr. Clare Craig argues that there is no evidence of a widespread folate deficiency in the UK population, and that adding folic acid to flour is not correcting a deficiency but rather acting like a drug.
From 13 December 2026, the UK government is mandating mass medication of the public with synthetic folic acid added to non-wholemeal wheat flour. Dr. Clare Craig has been publishing a series of articles to explain what we need to know about folic acid.
In 1875, the UK Parliament made it a criminal offence to adulterate flour. The Sale of Food and Drugs Act of that year was written in answer to a scandal that had been building for decades. Bakers bulked out their flour with alum, chalk and plaster of Paris, and on occasion with sawdust.
In 1861, Dr. Edward Lankester told the Royal Society of Arts that 87 per cent of the bread and 74 per cent of the milk sold in London was adulterated. The Act was intended to end all adulteration; its long title promised “better provision for the Sale of Food and Drugs in a pure state”.
Section 3 made it an offence to “mix… any article of food with any ingredient or material so as to render the article injurious to health”, with a second conviction punishable by being “imprisoned for a period not exceeding six months with hard labour.”
Section 6 forbade selling any food “not of the nature, substance, and quality of the article demanded.”
The principle was that you do not tamper with the staple food of the nation.
One hundred and fifty-one years later, the British government is about to add a substance known to be injurious to health – folic acid – to our flour....<<<Read More>>>....
