Dr. Clark,
On your first point I would answer full yes! The second point I would say it
depends which direction is chosen in the post-GR era. It is true that in a
good amount of vegetables vit A precursors are present. They are among the
cheaper vegetables like carrot, pumpkin, sweet potato and indigenous
vegetables in Southern countries. It is present in HUGE amounts in seedlings
from cereals like wheat and barley. These cereal seedlings can in many cases
also help tremendously in balancing other deficiencies and malfunctions from
the malnutrition. Many other beneficial qualities of wheat- and other
cerealseedlings have been described by several authors. I would like to put
wheatseedlings as a serious option in the treatment of serious
fooddefiencicies. I invite everybody to compare it with the golden rice.
wytze
"E. Ann Clark" wrote:
> Folks: I'm trying to follow this issue, and have become confused on a
> couple of points.
>
> 1. It seems that such a large variety of foodstuffs are currently
> available, at least to those with money to buy them, grow them, or free
> access to them (e.g. as weeds), such that Vit A deficiency should not be
> occurring at all. Indeed, some have stated that Vit A precursors are so
> widely distributed in so many different foodstuffs, that it is difficult
> NOT to get enough. If that is indeed true, then - as stated by others -
> in order to actually become Vit A deficient and suffer risk of
> blindness, one would have to be severely malnourished. If I am
> understanding this all correctly, how then is golden rice going to
> rectify Vit A deficiency if the real problem is simply such extreme
> poverty or deprivation as to prevent the unavoidable intake of
> sufficient Vit A (precursors)? As a corollary, if malnutrition were
> alleviated, would not the Vit A deficiency, by definition, likewise be
> alleviated? Conversely, alleviating Vit A deficiency through golden
> rice, or indeed, any approach that involves money or access issues,
> would by definition fail because the people who are poor enough to be so
> profoundly malnourished in the first place will not have the funds or
> access to obtain the golden rice. Have I got this right?
>
> 2. Is it indeed the case that prior to the advent of green revolution
> (GR) rice, people in the IRRI target regions of Asia suffered less Vit A
> deficiency and blindness? What does the historic trendline for these
> problems look like, spanning the pre- and post-GR intervals through to
> the present? If Vit A precursors are so readily available in so many
> foodstuffs, and if the GR has deprived people of access to such
> foodstuffs, then there should be a substantive change in
> blindness/deficiency incidence in the post-GR era - no? Can anyone help
> on this?
>
> Thanks in advance - Ann
>
> To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
> "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
> "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
> To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
> "subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
>
> All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
> http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:00:34 EST