But they're missing the point: it is processed foods that are deficient in this nutrient, not high-protein foods. Folic acid is naturally found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and of course superfoods like chlorella. A pregnant woman can easily meet the daily requirement for folic acid by simply eating fresh, unprocessed foods just like the ones described on the Atkins Food Guide Pyramid. You see, healthy foods rich in folic acid are already part of the Atkins diet recommendations.
For these doctors to attempt to connect low-carb diets with harm to the fetus via folic acid deficiency is absurd. Even a mother who doesn't get enough folic acid from a healthy diet can take a ten-cent supplement each day and get plenty of folic acid. Furthermore, people who follow the Atkins diet tend to be far more health conscious than the general public, meaning they are more likely to actually take the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional supplements needed to support good health.
Another amazing thing about these doctors from Canada is their statement that fortification -- the adding of folic acid back to white flour and other processed food ingredients -- is, "one of the greatest success stories in the history of medicine." Wow, what a claim. In fact, the very concept of fortification shows us what a total failure modern medicine really is. Milled grains, such as wheat, have virtually all their nutrition stripped away during processing. The original fiber, healthy oils, protein, vitamins and minerals are milled off the grain, leaving only the endosperm which contains lots of calories, but almost no nutrition. This endosperm is then ground up and bleached to make white flour, which is shipped off for human consumption. This process of stripping away all the nutrition from grains and then feeding humans the ground up endosperm of wheat berries is a nutritional disaster. If medicine were at all successful, doctors would be calling for a ban on white flour. It is our foods that are causing diseases like obesity and diabetes, and the reason is primarily because all the disease-fighting nutrition has purposely been stripped away from those foods. For doctors to claim that adding a bit of folic acid back to the white flour is somehow a medical victory is laughable.
But they're doctors, no surprise, which means they probably have no idea about the milling process of grains and the nutritional makeup of our food supply. Most doctors are, after all, nutritionally illiterate. If we would just eat the foods from nature, we could skip the grain mills, the hospitals and the doctors altogether. We'd all be healthier, wealthier and wiser for it.