Hi Freddd,
Yes you are right, BUT :
There are anterior types of Fake Folates.
Fake Folates were introduced to a wide public around 1750, with the popularization of "the Steam Digester", an invention of Denis Papin (around 1670 I believe). It was thought at the time to be a good way to feed the masses cheaply. The government used it on jail inmates. In Paris, a lot of people died or got very sick and he moved over to London with his machine.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Denis_Papin.html I leave you to search for more information about his life if you are interested. In a nutshell, he was known for his part in inventing the steam machine but he was also very interested in the preservation of food.
This pressure cooker extracted glutamates and people were addicted. It was immediately introduced to the kitchens of the King of England (around 1680). Because of the pressure inside the machine glutamine was turned into dangerous glutamates, and instead of a nourishing broth, it produced a soup that was lethal for those whose body could not adapt to this sudden overwhelming surge in folates. Does this ring a bell?
The others adapted with their epigenetic tools.
Because the Steam Digester could produce cheap meals soon christened "portable soup", they were an ideal tool for the Navy (at the time, the durability of embarked food was a limit to maritime exploration - hence most probably Papin's interest for the preservation of apples in a vacuum, which he invented too). In fact during all of the 18th century, lots of coastal villages in England and in France made their revenue from boiling meat and bones to transform them into hard slabs of "Portable Soup", using Papin's machine.
You can find many references to this "portable soup", and to the presence on British ships of Papin's machine, and on occasion discussions about the more palatable "portable soup" served on French ships in the very informative books of Patrick O'Brian :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey–Maturin_series
Of course, the popularity of the portable soup went on increasing, because of the addictive effect of the glutamates. It is even mentioned in the "Swiss Family Robinsons" by Johann Wyss (1812). The Swiss family cannot dream of living without it!!! It must have been quite popular at the time, even with people living in a land-locked area like Switzerland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swiss_Family_Robinson
By that time, a lot of the drawbacks has started to appear. Of course some people just died off, but a lot of the others suffered from guess what?and more sailors.
On the boats too a new problem emerged : more and more sailors were affected by a strange problem in the hands. A French doctor, Dupuytren, described the phenomenon, new to that period of time and devised an operation for it (1831). It was thought to affect those pulling on rope, but everybody was wondering why it had not happened in the past, because from time immemorial sailors had been pulling on ropes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupuytren's_contracture
You will of course notice that this is one of the numerous fibrosis problems induced by Folate Deficiency.
At the same time, on land, there were more and more cases of rickets. Lack of vitamin D!!! The sailors were not affected, despite their diet which might or might not have included more portable soup than average.
Fake folates induce problems with vitamin D through the calcium distribution.
Everywhere more and more people became sick with tuberculosis. Sailors did not get that in the lungs, but they got it in the gut.
We know now that Folate Deficiency induces a lowering of Th1 immunity, which protects against the mycobacterium of TB.
Hoping to protect the troops, Army doctors started a supplementation with malt.
By the beginning of the 20th century, malt was given to strengthen the working class (a growing amount of poor babies (and even wealthy ones if the parents were glutamate addicts) were born with spina bifida).
A deliberate attempt was being made to remedy the Folate Deficiency by introducing another type of folates.
The British Pharmaceutical Codex of 1907 explains how to make maltSome thought it was due to the longer weeks at sea, but it did not seem to affect people like Eskimos who had no vegetables or fruit to speak of. In a way that explosion of scurvy I think is related to the many cases of what we do not recognize as scurvy but is part of the symptoms of Folate Deficiency. extract.
(EDIT : Some people must have been noticing all was not perfect because during the First World War (when Fake Folates were distributed to all on the field and in factories) and afterwards, there were riots in France about the food being poisoned and a KNORR factory was burnt down.)
All this Folate Deficiency of course entailed a vitamin D deficiency too, and malt was mixed with cod liver oil to help. In "The House at Poo Corner" (1928) there is a mention of such a mixture.
Folic acid was next (as you say 1941).
Now we are using methylfolate.
Adding Fake Folates to food with increasingly bad consequences is not new.
I believe this is the cause of most of our problems.
The adaptation of our epigenetic disposition to this has led us to where we are. We are sick, but the others are dead.
Any food which has been enriched is pure poison for us.
This means even the raw rice we buy IF it has been coated with a hydrogenated oil for easier conservation.
Sorry, I have to leave, cooking to be done!
Best wishes to all,
Asklipia
Beware of
FFP