Either you are a bit paranoid, or I’m not paranoid enough!

I point out that folate is vitamin that is deficient in most people diets – Tryptophan most certainly is not. Proper wholemeal bread (not the weird stuff that they throw some seeds into) is rich in folate. All that is being done here is a partial reversal of a manufacturing process (removing the wheatgerm from flour)

I don’t see that the issue of whether we use the states power to change peoples diet in this instance is different to using it to change peoples diet in other instances.

Indeed yes – some bright spark might get the idea of fortifying bread with Tryptophan which if the epidemiological research is to be believed might lead to a more contented a relaxed population with a reduction in depression and better sleep patterns for all.

And as a gedankenexperiment imagine some epidemiological research shows feeding adolescent boys high dosages of some vitamin or other reduced the likelihood of them developing prostate cancer in later life. D’ya reckon the concept of fortifying bread with said vitamin would fly? As for me – I doubt very strongly that it would.

Does that mean that there’s naturally folate in bread but the bakers take it out?

There are foods that naturally have good concentrations of folate in them, so I don’t see that the issue of whether we use the states power to change peoples diet in this instance is different to using it to change peoples diet in other instances.

Mass medication I have no time for. As you correctly point out, everyone is unique and responds to medication differently.

However, what is proposed is merely the reintroduction of a small amount of a vitamin into a product (bread) that has been deliberately denuded of all nutritional value. I cannot see how this can be anything other than good.

Of course, if the Bakers had been really clever, as opposed to merely cunning, they would already be marketing a fortified bread line especially aimed at women of childbearing age…

As will be the bleating of statisticians who point out the way
politically motivated epidemiologists distort data in order to force people to be vitamized whether they want to be or not.

The most robust study of this shows benefits where the rate of neural tube defects is high to begin with and only small effects, probably statistically insignificant, where it is low already. The regional variation in the incidence of neural tube defects, which is quite large, is the real question and I suggest answering this would be the key to managing this problem on a population basis rather than the hail mary solution of more government interference in peoples lives whether they want it or not.

Confused yet? I know I am.

Why – it is obvious that a great many things may be beneficial for one aspect of human health and detrimental to another – our biochemistry is a compromise, is it not? And many dietary essentials are toxic in large doses e.g. selenium springs to mind immediately.

To throw another curveball each individuals biochemistry is unique so what may benefit individual a may be harmful to individual b. I am of the opinion that for the most part we tend to choose foods which suit our personal biochemistry by instinct and for the vast majority this works out ok, well at least until advanced age when the depredations of life catch up with you.

I am surprised that the mass medication of entire populations isn’t an anathema to you MacD, its using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut with unknown consequences.

At the end of the day plumbers have done more for human health and welfare than any doctors with their faddish dietary ideas or “public health” nannies and busybodies.