Folate facts for kids

Folate, also known as vitamin B₉, is one of the B vitamins. It is an essential nutrient, which means your body can't make it, so you must get it from food.

Folate is very important for making DNA and RNA, which are the building blocks of your body. It helps your cells divide and grow, which is especially important when you are growing up. It also helps make healthy red blood cells that carry oxygen all around your body.

A manufactured version called folic acid is often added to foods like bread and cereal and is used in vitamin supplements. This is because it's more stable and easier for the body to use.

Getting enough folate is extremely important for women who are pregnant. It helps a baby's brain and spine develop properly and can prevent serious health problems. Because of this, more than 80 countries add folic acid to some of their foods.

Folate was discovered between 1931 and 1943. Its name comes from the Latin word folium, which means "leaf," because it was first found in leafy green vegetables like spinach.

What is Folate?

The word "folate" is used to talk about a whole family of related vitamin B₉ compounds. You might hear two main terms:

• Folate is the natural form of vitamin B₉ that you find in foods like leafy greens, beans, and fruits.
• Folic acid is the man-made (synthetic) form of vitamin B₉. It's used in vitamin pills and added to foods in a process called fortification. Your body converts folic acid into a form of folate it can use.

Both forms are important for your health. They help your body with many jobs, especially creating new cells.

Why Folate is Important for Your Body

Folate is a key player in keeping you healthy and growing. It's especially important during times of rapid growth, like during your teenage years or for a developing baby.

Making DNA and New Cells

Think of DNA as the instruction manual for your body. It tells every cell what to do. To make a new cell, your body has to copy this instruction manual. Folate helps with this copying process.

Without enough folate, cell division slows down. This affects all parts of your body, but especially places where cells divide quickly, like your skin, your gut, and your bone marrow where blood is made.

Healthy Blood

Folate is essential for making healthy red blood cells. These cells are responsible for carrying oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body.

If you don't have enough folate, your body might start making red blood cells that are too large and don't work properly. This can lead to a type of anemia, a condition that can make you feel tired, weak, and out of breath.

Helping Babies Grow

One of the most important jobs of folate is to help babies develop correctly in the very early stages of pregnancy. It plays a huge role in forming the baby's brain and spinal cord.

Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can greatly reduce the risk of serious problems. This is why many doctors recommend that women who might become pregnant take a folic acid supplement.

What Happens if You Don't Get Enough Folate?

Not getting enough folate in your diet can lead to a folate deficiency. This can happen if you don't eat enough folate-rich foods or if your body has trouble absorbing it.

Symptoms of folate deficiency can include:

• Feeling very tired or weak
• Shortness of breath
• Sores on the tongue
• Changes in the color of your skin or hair
• Poor growth in children

A lack of folate can cause a condition called megaloblastic anemia. This is when the bone marrow produces red blood cells that are very large and immature, so they can't carry oxygen well. A doctor can diagnose a folate deficiency with a simple blood test.

How Your Body Uses Folate

This diagram shows how folate helps turn homocysteine into methionine, an important amino acid.

When you eat foods with folate or take a folic acid supplement, it gets absorbed in your small intestine. From there, it travels to your liver. The liver is like a processing plant that converts folate into its active form, called tetrahydrofolate (THF).

Once it's active, THF travels through your blood to all the cells in your body. Its main job is to carry and transfer single-carbon groups. This might sound complicated, but it's a key step in many important processes, like:

• Building the blocks for DNA.
• Repairing DNA when it gets damaged.
• Helping to turn one type of amino acid (homocysteine) into another (methionine).

Folate also works as a team with other vitamins, especially vitamin B₁₂. These two vitamins depend on each other to work correctly.

Where Can You Find Folate?

You can get folate from many delicious foods. It's also added to many common grocery items.

Foods with Folate

Folate is found naturally in a wide variety of foods. Some of the best sources are:

• Leafy Green Vegetables: Spinach, kale, and lettuce.
• Legumes: Lentils, chickpeas, and beans.
• Vegetables: Asparagus, broccoli, and beets.
• Fruits: Avocados and oranges.
• Nuts and Seeds: Peanuts and sunflower seeds.

Cooking can destroy some of the natural folate in food, especially if you boil it in water. Steaming or lightly cooking vegetables helps keep more of the vitamin.

Fortified Foods

In many countries, grain products like flour, bread, and cereal have folic acid added to them.

Because folate is so important, many countries have a policy of food fortification. This means they add folic acid to common foods to make sure people get enough.

In the United States, Canada, and over 80 other countries, folic acid is added to:

• Flour
• Bread
• Cereal
• Pasta
• Rice

This has been very successful. In the U.S., after fortification started in 1998, the number of babies born with neural tube defects dropped by 35%. This shows how a simple public health measure can make a big difference.

A Little Bit of History

• In the 1930s, a scientist named Lucy Wills discovered that a substance in brewer's yeast could help pregnant women with anemia. This substance was later identified as folate.
• In 1941, folate was first taken from spinach leaves. This is how it got its name, from the Latin word folium, meaning "leaf."
• In 1943, scientists were able to make pure folic acid in a lab. This allowed them to study it more closely and eventually led to its use in supplements and fortified foods.
• By the 1960s, scientists had confirmed the link between low folate levels and the risk of neural tube defects in babies. This discovery led to the food fortification programs we have today.

Images for kids

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  The chemical structure of the folate family.

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  How folic acid is changed into other forms in the body.