Dietary folate intake: is there a need for folic acid fortification in the Netherlands?

Introduction: Sufficient intake of folate, a B-vitamin, prevents macrocytic anemia and lowers the risk of neural tube defects.This thesis studied whether Dutch diets provide enough folate to meet folate requirements and describes how to deal with folic acid fortification.To be able to study this, we assessed if gender and bioavailability influence folate requirements.In addition, we studied if vitamin B12 fortification, combined with folic acid fortification would be desirable. Table of contents Chapter 1 General introduction 8Chapter 2 Gender and body size affect the response of erythrocyte 18 folate to folic acid treatment Journal of Nutrition, 2008; 138: 1456-1461 Chapter 3 Development of a method to study bioavailability of folate 40 from total diets in healthy humans, using daily low doses of 13 C-labeled folic acid Chapter 4 Bioavailability of food folates is 80% of that of folic acid 52 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007;85:465-473 Chapter 5 Bread co-fortified with folic acid and vitamin B12 76 improves folate and vitamin B12 status of healthy older people: a randomized controlled trial