I'm not surprised that our Board paper on folic acid, published last Friday in advance of this week’s meeting, got lots of weekend media coverage.
Nor is it surprising that the pregnancy and baby sections on our eatwell website are always in the top ten of most-visited pages.
Getting pregnant is a major life event and there’s an understandable thirst for information about how to eat healthily before during and after pregnancy, such as when you’re breastfeeding.
I'll no doubt be blogging later this week after the Board's discussion on folate, but when I read the paper, which includes a proposal to fortify flour with folic acid to reduce the number of babies born with neural tube defects such as spina bifida, it struck me how much pregnancy and baby-related advice and information we’ve issued since we were established in 2000.
Most of this is aimed at the wider population and follows recommendations from our expert independent scientific advisory committees– foods to eat, foods to avoid, safe amounts of coffee and oily fish while you’re pregnant.
There’s also the regular surveys we carry out to monitor the safety, authenticity and nutritional quality of baby foods. Just last week we published the latest results from our 2006 survey of metals in weaning foods for infants, for instance.
And, finally, there’s the need to issue targeted advice aimed at specific communities when we become aware of an issue. Because of our openness remit, this advice also ends up on our websites, but we have to consider the best ways to communicate the risk to the population group in question. Let me give you an example.
Two weeks ago we did some targeted work with the Ugandan community after being alerted to a potential problem with a batch of powdered baby food that's manufactured there and believed to be sold at a small number of outlets in the UK.
There’s also Calabash chalk, traditionally eaten by women from Nigerian and West African communities and believed to help with morning sickness.
But the chalk usually contains high levels of lead which could harm the mental development of an unborn baby.
Although we issued advice in 2002, we haven’t stopped there. This year we have been working with GP surgeries and health centres in areas with high West African populations to raise awareness of the dangers of Calabash chalk through a new poster and leaflet campaign.
