@Snow Leopard Folic acid is not folate.
Sorry to be picky but...
Folate indicates a collection of "folates" that is not chemically well-characterized, including other members of the family of pteroylglutamates, or mixtures of them, having various levels of reduction of the pteridine ring, one-carbon substitutions and different numbers of glutamate residues.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid )
I think what you mean is that synthetic folic acid is not as good as dietary folate or the reduced form of folate, MTHF.
Each different form of folate (eg: synthetic folic acid, DHF, folinic acid, THF etc...) requires a number of different enzymatic steps to be turned into the reduced active form (MTHF), and the synthetic form Is the one requiring more of these steps.
People with slow folate metabolism (MTHFR 677 defect) may need to use more active form of folate (folinic, 5-MTHF) but I don't think this has to be taken as an absolute proposition.
There's plenty of people with MTHFR mutations that have no folate issues just by keeping a decent diet. I am MTHFR homozygous and have suffered very high homocysteine. Before knowing about the defect I was given the regular "horrible" folic acid and yet my homocysteine went down pretty quickly.
Some of the claims about MTHFR and methyl-folate seem quite hyperbolic to me, although it certainly make sense to check for possible known mutations and correct the issue.
cheers