A Stitch in Haste

We all know about adding fluoride to the drinking water and Vitamin D to milk. Now the next targets for "enhancement" are our grain products.

Perhaps you have, like me, already sworn off all wheat- and oat-based breakfast cereals ever since General Mills switched to exclusively whole grain in their processing. Sorry, but eating what seems like a bowl of bitter-tasting wet cardboard is simply not worth the calories. It's strictly Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies (and the occasional Cap'n Crunch) from now on.

In the U.K., meanwhile, bread will become the latest weapon in the War on Spinal Diseases:

Folic acid is to be added to bread to cut the number of birth defects like spina bifida, it has been reported.
...
[T]he process could cost the industry about £700,000 a year.
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Between 700 and 900 pregnancies in the UK are affected by neural tube defects every year. Countries that have started compulsorily adding folic acid to flour have seen a 30 to 50% drop in the problem. But the vitamin can delay the diagnosis and treatment of vitamin B12 deficiency in older people.

The brief also warned of "general ethical population concerns about the prospect of 'compulsory' or 'mass medication' issues".

Some hasty stitches:

--I have no idea whether adding folic acid to bread and flour will make it taste different, as is the case with the "whole grain" cereal debacle. But I do know that folic acid can come in pill form and is usually included in multi-vitamins. Couldn't the government just give free or low-cost vitamins to pregnant women? Not very libertarian, I know, but certainly better than re-jiggering an entire swath of the food chain for the benefit of perhaps 450 spina bifida babies at best.

--Speaking of "at best," those "other countries" that have added folic acid to flour are mostly poorer, less-developed nations in Central and South America. And even they only achieve "a 30 to 50% drop in the problem." Surely a hyper-developed nation like the U.K. would reap a dramatically lower benefit from such a remedial program.

--Notice that there will be not only the direct £700,000 annual cost, but also the indirect cost to the elderly who might suffer needlessly from Vitamin B12 deficiency. But no matter, some hack bureaucrat has decided that the trade-off is appropriate. Whether you think it's appropriate is of course irrelevant to them.

--Will the U.K. government now recommend (perhaps with public service announcements, perhaps with subsidies) that pregnant women — and everyone else — eat more carbs? Can that possibly be wise? Is the "War Between the War on Obesity and the War on Spina Bifida" a war we should be taking sides in?

--Oh, one more thing: "general ethical population concerns about the prospect of 'compulsory' or 'mass medication' issues." Indeed.

The War on Obesity is bad enough. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is bad enough. Paul Krugman is way more than bad enough. Must all these would-be central planners also centrally plan my sandwich?