Happy Folic Acid Awareness Week!!!!!!

Happy Folic Acid Awareness Week!!!!!!

I had no idea that it was Folic Acid Awareness week (January 4-10), until a random search via Google took me straight to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) website!

This post piggy backs on Belinda’s fantastic reminder about the significant and critical relationship between our (humans) health and the food we eat.  As a woman and a mother, I can’t begin to tell you how obsessed I am with folic acid and any/everything that might contain the vitamin.

What the heck is folic acid? It is a complex B vitamin that our body uses to make red blood cells.

Source:  chemistry.about.com

But what might be more relevant to mommies, mommies-to-be and any  ladies out there with the potential/ability/possibility of having babies is that folic acid can very much prevent serious neural tube defects (NTD) of the brain and spine (insufficient folic acid can cause the incomplete development of either or both body parts).   The CDC recommends that women take abut 400 mcg of folic acid DAILY, which can help reduce the chance of an (NTB) by 70%.

While vitamins (like pre-natals) and foods foritifed with folic acid (like breakfast cereals, breads and pastas) are a wonderful source of folic acid,  there are other sources with ra eadily available storage of folic acid:

Green Leafy Vegetables (collard greens, kale, spinach is excellent!)
Citrus Fruits
Legumes (lentils, black-eyed peas, chicpeas, kidney beans)
Chicken livers (if you can stomach it – Belinda wouldn’t have a problem with this)
Wheat Germ
Raw fruits and other vegetables

Forcing ourselves to seek out food sources of folic acid as a way to prevent potential neurel birth defects might even encourage us/influence us to eat better and properly!  That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it!?

So ladies, get your folic acid on in 2010!

Tags: center for disease control preention, Chickpeas, folic acid, health-diet-nutrition, legeumes, lentils, list of foods high in folic acid, neural tube defects, pre-natal vitamins, spina bifida, spinach

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