When was mandatory fortification introduced in the U.S. and Canada?
Mandatory fortification of certain foods with folic acid was introduced in the US and Canada in 1998. The reason this was implemented was to reduce birth defects; and, that the program has been successful in cutting the number of children born with neural tube defects by over 25 per cent. Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compared stroke mortality rates in the United States and Canada for 1990 to 1997 ( the period before fortification), and 1998 to 2002( the period after fortification), with stroke mortality rates in England and Wales. The study based stroke mortality rates on statistics from the national centers for health statistics in the respective countries. And, that the reported rate of decline in the number of deaths from stroke in the U.S. between 1990 and 1997 was .3% as compared to 2.9% after introduction of the mandatory fortification program. In Canada, the fall in stroke mortality was even more dramatic, with the average decrease bei
