Would you use lipstick with added folic acid?

WHAT do you feel about stuff being added to your food and drink without your consent? I’m all in favour — or at least when it comes to fortifying foods.

So I am happy that at least some fluoride is added to Irish drinking water, despite the fact that the levels are less than half the maximum permitted by the EU.

In Britain folic acid is going to be added to flour but despite a committee recommendation to do the same 13 years ago, as yet there are no plans for Ireland to follow suit.

Folic acid is naturally found in leafy green veg but around a fifth of women aren’t getting enough in their diets and that matters because if you become pregnant, it increases the chances your baby will have a neural tube defect such as spina bifida.

I first made a film supporting this campaign nearly 25 years ago — the experts I spoke to were so desperate to help young women improve their folic acid levels one even suggested adding it to lipstick.

Many countries have been fortifying their flour with folic acid for decades; when it was added to flour in Australia, neural tube defects fell by 14 per cent, and by 74 per cent among Indigenous women.

Why stop there? Most other countries in the world add iodine to salt. There is a reluctance to do it, which could explain why we are one of the most iodine-deficient countries in the world. We need iodine to make thyroxine, a hormone that helps control metabolic rate — low levels of iodine lead to weight gain, as well as mood swings. It’s time we started campaigning to have iodine added to our salt — and let’s hope that, unlike the campaign for folic acid, it doesn’t take so long to have an impact.