hello ann,
>Altieri within a few weeks). The issue of golden rice came up in
>one of the evening, campus-wide seminars. Someone from the
>audience, a physician I believe, stood up and noted that Vit A was
>present in the part of the hull that is typically ground off to
>make polished rice. So, part of the issue may be simply processing
>- comments?
but that's no special problem of 3-world-countries. you have it
with your fortified bread, we have it with the move from rye to
wheat (in the middle ages the much more healthy and nitritious rye
was the staple food in europe for 80% of the population, then the
richer people switched to the white bread made by wheat). they did
not do this for health reasons, but for the softer consistency and
the milder taste. and soon wheat bread became the desire of the
poorer people too (for no other reason than adoption to the
behaviour of the rich). result: less minerals, less fibre and less
vitamins (though the vitamins are not so important, because they
are almost entirely lost by baking in 250 C.)
but the fact is: though all this is known today, very few people
change back to rye, the germans, the czech and the polnish people
are the only countries in europe with about 25% bread from rye.
forget the french or the italians and their baguettes !! (no insult
intended, but whenever i have guests from these countries, i do not
even DARE to serve dark bread. certainly they do not suffer
vitamin deficiencies in general).
result: few people are willing to change their eating behavior. now
what to do ? to me this is comparable with flouridation and iodine
supplementation of salt. you (don't know about canada, but
certainly the us) have it by law, we in europe recommand it, but
refuse to supplement it by force of law...
>He further noted, and I think I recall this correctly, that some
>varieties of rice - I think they were red (?) - already had high
>levels of Vit A.
certainly not only SOME. several years ago i visited a seed lab in
sri lanka near peradenyia. they showed me some enormous drawers
with thousands of rice varieties in all colors of the rainbow (even
blue ones). i haven't the slightest idea about their quality and
their field properties, but remembering the several hundreds of
red, yellow and orange varieties i STRONGLY doubt, that there
aren't enough varieties with VERY high carotinoid contents.
the problem remains: almost all of us are talking from the irony
tower and it's not us to decide, how the people in these
countries will decide. i'm always a bit unlucky to read people, who
try to solve other people's problems from the distance and the
closer they approach the problem, the more dubious their
solution becomes....
what we would need, is a reader from these regions or someone, who
lived there for quite a long time, who could tell us about the real
and practical food problems there. i know parts of south america,
where the peasants face problems, a european would not even think
about and which seem to be just unbelievable to him. the same might
happen in asia in the rice regions.... in short: i don't trust
WESTERN experts, the eastern countries have their own !! and i
would like to hear from them, what they have to tell us.
unfortunately none of these poor (blind) people has the slightest
chance of internet access (the gap between the "information rich"
and the info poor in the future will become almost as important as
education)
klaus
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:00:33 EST