Mandatorily fortified with folic acid
What’s Really Inside Your Bread?
Folic Acid vs Folate. Why It Matters for Your Health.
Watch the full video below before reading — this post expands on what I show and explain on camera.
A simple question with big consequences. What’s actually inside your bread?
Very soon in the UK, it will be government-mandated that most bread contains a synthetic, lab-made version of vitamin B9 known as folic acid.
That sounds harmless on the surface. But once you understand what folic acid actually is, and how the body handles it, the conversation changes.
What is folic acid?
Folic acid does not exist naturally in food.
It’s a synthetic compound, manufactured in chemical factories using petroleum-derived inputs, then added back into everyday products such as:
White flour
Bread
Breakfast cereals
Processed grains
Many supplements
This isn’t food-based nutrition. It’s industrial fortification.
Why conversion matters. Your body cannot use folic acid directly. Before it can be useful, folic acid must:
Travel to the liver
Be converted into its active form
Then enter metabolism
That extra conversion step may sound minor, but for many people it creates metabolic strain, especially when intake is chronic.
This is very different from how humans have obtained vitamin B9 for thousands of years.
Folate: the natural form of vitamin B9
Folate is the form of vitamin B9 found naturally in real food. You can eat it today from foods like:
Eggs
Leafy greens (such as watercress and rocket)
Legumes
Avocado
Liver
Folate is already bioactive, which means:
Your body recognises it
It’s absorbed efficiently
It enters metabolism smoothly
No bottlenecks. No forced conversion. No metabolic friction. Same vitamin on paper. Very different biology. This is the part most people never see.
Folic acid is synthetic → must be converted first
Folate is natural → used immediately
They’re often treated as interchangeable, but biologically they are not the same. The environmental cost we don’t talk about. There’s also a wider issue here. Producing folic acid requires:
Large chemical factories
Petroleum refinement
High energy use
All of this to add a synthetic nutrient back into ultra-processed food. Instead of encouraging real, nutrient-dense ingredients in the first place. Supporting better choices.
I do want to acknowledge companies that are adapting responsibly. Some brands are:
Reformulating products
Moving away from white flour
Using wholegrain or wholefood alternatives
That matters because consumer choice still drives supply.
If we don’t buy it, supermarkets won’t stock it.
What you can do
Read ingredient labels
Support cleaner, simpler formulations
Choose real food sources of nutrients
Question policies framed as “public health” when they mainly serve industrial convenience
This isn’t about fear. It’s about informed choice.
Final thoughts. Real food already solved this problem, and long before factories did.
Eat foods your body recognises. Support better ingredients. And always remember:
Eat real food. Eat to heal.