Folic Acid vs. Folate: The Difference, Your Daily Needs and What Methylfolate Is

Folate is the umbrella term for the vitamin as it occurs naturally in food. Folic acid is the synthetic form that ends up in most supplements and fortified foods. According to the German Nutrition Society (DGE), adults should get 300 µg of folate a day. If you're trying to get pregnant, you take an extra 400 µg of folic acid or an equivalent amount of another folate. Methylfolate, 5-MTHF for short, is the form folate takes as it travels through your blood anyway. In the amounts found in a normal supplement, it's at least as effective as folic acid, without the conversion that folic acid needs first.

There's a lot of half-knowledge going around about folic acid, though, all the way to the gene that supposedly means you can't process folic acid at all. So here we cleanly separate what health authorities recommend from what studies show. And because we use methylfolate ourselves, we'll also explain why at the end.

Folic acid vs. folate: what's the difference?

Folate is the vitamin from food, folic acid its industrially made version. The DGE puts it this way in its questions and answers on folate: “The synthetic (industrially produced) form of the vitamin is called folic acid. Folic acid is used to fortify foods and in vitamin supplements.” Unfortunately, the two words get mixed up on packaging all the time.

The real difference lies in the conversion. Folic acid is chemically very stable, but in the body it can't do anything at first. It first has to be converted in several steps into the form your cells work with. In the blood, almost all of it ends up as 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, 5-MTHF or methylfolate for short. According to the same review, that's the only form that normally circulates there. A flat-pack wardrobe is a pretty good picture: it keeps forever and stores easily, but someone still has to assemble it first. Methylfolate, then, is the wardrobe that's already standing.

The factors come from the overview by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), its scientific opinion on methylfolate and the DGE. The idea behind them is simple: the body gets more out of folic acid than out of the folate in vegetables. That's why 100 µg of folic acid with a meal counts the same as 170 µg of folate from food.

What does your body need folate for?

Folate is needed wherever cells divide and something new is made. That happens in your body every day, above all in making blood. The DGE describes it from the other side: with a folate deficiency, “cell division and growth processes are disrupted first and foremost.”

What folate officially does, the EU has recorded precisely in its list of authorized health claims. It's quite a list: folate contributes to normal blood formation, to normal homocysteine metabolism, to normal amino acid synthesis, to normal psychological function, to the normal function of the immune system and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, and it has a role in the process of cell division. For pregnancy, there's a separate statement: folate contributes to maternal tissue growth during pregnancy.

In practical terms, that means without folate your body can't keep up with rebuilding, for red blood cells just as for everything else that's constantly renewed. Homocysteine is an intermediate product of protein metabolism that folate processes further together with vitamin B6 and B12.

How much folate do you need per day?

For teenagers and adults, the DGE gives 300 µg of dietary folate equivalents a day, the same for women and men. EFSA lands on almost the same value with 330 µg. Dietary folate equivalents just means folate from food and converted folic acid are added together, using the factors from the table above. For pregnant and breastfeeding women, the values are considerably higher:

That always applies to everything you take in from food and supplements combined. The extra folic acid when trying to conceive comes on top of that.

In Germany, far from everyone reaches that. The DGE itself writes that the recommended intake is “not reached by a large proportion of adults.” In Germany's National Nutrition Survey II by the Max Rubner Institute (MRI), with more than 15,000 people, half of the men without supplements were below 283 µg of dietary folate equivalents a day, half of the women below 252 µg. Measured against the amount recommended back then, 400 µg, 79% of men and 86% of women didn't reach the recommendation. Being below the reference value doesn't yet mean having a deficiency, and the survey is about twenty years old. But it does show that folate runs short in a lot of kitchens.

Which foods are high in folate?

The most folate comes from green leafy vegetables, legumes and whole grains. The DGE lists as good sources of folate “green vegetables, especially leafy vegetables such as spinach and salad greens, tomatoes, legumes, nuts, oranges, sprouts, wheat germ and whole grain products as well as potatoes, liver and eggs.” In the same overview, it also works out what individual servings provide:

With one serving of spinach and a lamb's lettuce salad, you're already at around 300 µg on paper. According to the DGE, you don't need fortified foods for that: “In general, it isn't necessary to eat fortified foods.” You'll find folate compared with all the other vitamins in our vitamin overview with table.

Folic acid when trying to conceive and during pregnancy: what do experts recommend?

From the time you start trying to conceive until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy, an extra 400 µg of folic acid or an equivalent amount of another folate is added every day. That's what the recommendations of Germany's Healthy Start network (Netzwerk Gesund ins Leben) say, word for word: “Women who wish to have a child should supplement 400 µg of folic acid per day or an equivalent amount of other folates in addition to a balanced diet. Intake should begin when trying to conceive and continue until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy.” If you don't start at least four weeks before conception, you should take 800 µg until the end of the 12th week.

The DGE names an increased risk of malformations affecting the baby's brain and spinal cord, above all spina bifida, as a consequence of an inadequate supply during pregnancy. That's why the recommendation applies from the moment you start trying, not only from the positive test. This protection has been shown in the large studies with folic acid. Methylfolate is approved for the recommendation, though, and the network explicitly lists calcium L-methylfolate and the glucosamine salt of 5-MTHF as approved folate compounds.

According to the network, however, only about 40% of pregnant women take folic acid at the right time and in the right amount. During pregnancy, iodine at 100 to 150 µg a day is added as well, with thyroid conditions only after consulting your doctor. Supplements containing vitamin A should only be taken during pregnancy after consulting your doctor.

Our products are made for the everyday life of adults, not for trying to conceive or pregnancy; there are specially formulated supplements for that, so talk to your doctor or midwife about it. Iron, the pill and menopause are covered in the article what women really need.

What is methylfolate (5-MTHF), and is it better than folic acid?

Methylfolate is the form of folate that circulates in the blood, and in comparison studies it's at least as effective as folic acid. So in the usual amounts found in a supplement, it's equivalent, and at higher amounts it's even slightly ahead.

EFSA examined this very closely in 2022 and turned it into a clear rule: up to 400 µg a day, it counts methylfolate exactly the same as folic acid. From 400 µg, it uses a factor of 2 instead of 1.7, because at that level methylfolate raised the folate in red blood cells about 1.2 times more. That fits a study by the University of Bonn with 144 young women. After 24 weeks at 400 µg a day, red blood cell folate rose more with methylfolate than with the same amount of folic acid. The lead is small, but it falls right in the range around 400 µg where EFSA also gives methylfolate more credit.

Since 2026, there's also the first human study for the glucosamine salt, in 110 pregnant women in Indonesia. For twelve weeks, they took either folic acid or methylfolate in the same amount. Red blood cell folate rose just as reliably in both groups, and active folate in the blood tended to rise even a bit more with methylfolate. Bigger leads, like the ones you read in some advertising, so far only come from one experiment in 18 rats, and that was run by the manufacturer of this form itself.

What can be measured in the blood for a short time after a dose of folic acid is unmetabolized folic acid, but not after methylfolate. Whether that matters for health is open, and a methylfolate manufacturer was involved in the study. For us, though, it shows pretty vividly that methylfolate spares the body the conversion.

What does the MTHFR gene have to do with it?

MTHFR is an enzyme that handles the last step toward methylfolate. In up to 12% of people in Northern Europe and up to 24% in Southern Europe, it works considerably more slowly because of a gene variant. These people can still process folic acid.

The figures come from EFSA's 2022 opinion. If you've inherited the 677TT variant from both parents, you have up to 70% less enzyme activity and on average about 20 to 25% less folate in your blood. The enzyme is like a bottleneck that all folates have to pass through, including the one from food. For some people it's narrower, but it's never closed.

How this plays out in practice was compared in a small study with 24 women. 16 of them carried the 677TT variant, and all of them got folic acid once and methylfolate once. Even in the carriers, the folic acid showed up in the blood as methylfolate. But methylfolate raised blood folate faster and higher in them, just as in everyone else. It was only measured after a single dose, but it's still a point for methylfolate. So if someone tells you that because of MTHFR you “can't process folic acid,” that's not quite right. The Healthy Start network doesn't give a separate amount for carriers of the variant either.

What are the signs of a folate deficiency?

There are hardly any clear signs. A folate deficiency shows up mainly where cells divide quickly, and according to the DGE it can lead to anemia, for example. Tiredness alone reveals little, it has too many other possible causes.

Only a lab value brings clarity. And because folate and vitamin B12 work so closely together, B12 really always belongs on the list too. Which values get measured first when tiredness is unexplained is covered in the article getting tested for a vitamin deficiency.

Can you take too much folic acid?

Yes, for adults EFSA draws a tolerable upper intake level (UL) of 1,000 µg a day from supplements and fortified foods. It explicitly applies to methylfolate too, while folate from food isn't counted.

The reason isn't the folate itself at all, it's vitamin B12. A lot of folate can mask the typical blood changes of a B12 deficiency, while the deficiency quietly progresses in the nerves. For EFSA, that's exactly the decisive point. If you take high-dose folic acid, keep an eye on B12 as well, more on that in the article on B12 deficiency and daily needs. Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) also proposes no more than 200 µg of folic acid or an equivalent amount of other folates per daily dose for a single food supplement. That way, even several supplements together shouldn't add up to too much. For women of childbearing age and pregnant women in the first trimester, it still explicitly recommends the 400 µg.

If you take methotrexate or anti-seizure drugs like phenytoin, talk to your doctor before taking any supplement containing folate, more on that in the article multivitamin side effects, overdose and interactions.

Why does BASE contain methylfolate instead of folic acid?

Because we wanted the form your body works with anyway. With folate, a large share of people in Germany fall below the DGE's recommended intake. And if we're going to add something there, we're going to do it properly: with the form of folate that circulates in the blood. That's why BASE by Fifty Five contains 200 µg of folate as Quatrefolic®, a glucosamine salt of 5-MTHF. The 200 µg are pure 5-MTHF, the salt around it isn't counted. With EFSA's factor of 1.7, that's about 340 µg of dietary folate equivalents, so more than the 300 µg the DGE recommends for adults per day. At this amount, EFSA counts methylfolate exactly the same as folic acid, so it's equivalent and gets there without the detour, and we really don't need a form of folate to do more than that.

The same mini capsule contains vitamin B12 as methylcobalamin, exactly the partner folate works so closely with. How we chose the other forms is explained in the quality check for multivitamins, and what belongs in a multivitamin in the multivitamin guide.

FAQ

Do men need folic acid too?

Yes, men need just as much folate as women, and the DGE and EFSA reference values are the same for both. There's no separate folic acid recommendation for men like the one for women trying to conceive. Still, it's worth a look at your plate, because among men, too, more than half were below today's reference value in Germany's National Nutrition Survey II.

Is a supplement with folate worth it even if you're not trying to conceive?

Often, yes, because folate is one of the vitamins where the recommendation is missed most often. If you eat green vegetables, legumes and whole grains every day, you don't need a supplement for it. If that doesn't happen every day, a moderately dosed supplement with methylfolate is reliable backup, with plenty of distance from the upper limit of 1,000 µg.

How long before pregnancy should you start taking folic acid?

At least four weeks before conception, ideally from the moment you want to get pregnant. And then until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. Because many pregnancies are unplanned, the DGE already advises women who could become pregnant to take the daily 400 µg.

Should a B complex contain folic acid?

As a rule, yes. Folate is one of the eight B vitamins, so a B complex without folate would be incomplete. Add up all your supplements so you stay below the 1,000 µg, more on that in B vitamins at a glance.

When is the best time to take folic acid?

You don't need a specific time of day, and there aren't any studies comparing times of day anyway. What matters is a fixed spot in your day, breakfast for example. More on that in when to take a multivitamin.

Is folate destroyed by cooking?

Partly, yes. For a folate-rich diet, the DGE expressly advises washing vegetables “only briefly and unchopped, steaming instead of boiling and not keeping them warm.” Lamb's lettuce, bell pepper and kohlrabi from the table above go on your plate raw anyway.

Disclaimer:

This article is for informational purposes only and does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment by a physician or pharmacist. The information provided here should not be used for self-diagnosis or self-treatment. Food supplements are no substitute for a balanced, varied diet and a healthy lifestyle. For any health questions or complaints, please always consult a doctor you trust. Fifty Five accepts no liability for any inconvenience or harm resulting from the use of the information presented here.

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