Rice - What's in a Single Grain
Harvesting Rice's Economic, Nutritional and Cultural Significance
Mar 29, 2009
According to reporter Martin Flacker of The New York Times, Japan is suffering from the effects of a growing number of dying family farms, in part due to the falling price of rice internationally. A crisis many Americans will recognize from their own heartland, recalling the American family farms that died at the hands of industrialized farming in the 1980's.
Beauty of Rice
Take a moment to appreciate the simple beauty of a bright, translucent grain of white rice; an invaluable resource of nutrients and sustenance for millions of impoverished and destitute citizens of the world; an economic export second only to it's less romantic, bloated and diabetes-inducing cousin, yellow corn.
The generations of Asian farmers who've grown and harvested rice, not simply as a commodity, but as a way of life, as an art almost, may be fading away, and succumbing to a more technological age, where young Asian men and women are finding new bright and shiny grains of inspiration, in the form of a computer pixel.
Health Benefits of Rice
From the International Rice Research Institute:
- Cholesterol Free: Eating rice is extremely beneficial for health, just for the fact that it does not contain harmful fats, cholesterol or sodium. It forms an integral part of balanced diet.
- Rich in Vitamins: Rice is an excellent source of vitamins and minerals like niacin, vitamin D, calcium, fibre, iron, thiamine and riboflavin.
- High Blood Pressure: As rice is low in sodium, it is considered best food for those suffering from high blood pressure and hypertension.
- Cancer Prevention: Whole grain rice like brown rice is rich in insoluble fibre that can possibly protect against many types of cancers. Many scientists believe that such insoluble fibres are vital for protecting the body against cancerous cells.
- Dysentery: The husk part of rice is considered as an effective medicine to treat dysentery. A three month old rice plant's husks is said to contain diuretic properties. Chinese people believe that rice considerably increases appetite, cures stomach ailments and indigestion problems.
- Alzheimer's Disease: Brown rice is said to contain high levels of neurotransmitter nutrients that can prevent Alzheimer's disease to a considerable extent.
- Heart Disease: Rice bran oil is said to have antioxidant properties that promotes cardiovascular strength by reducing cholesterol levels in the body.
Rice as Harbinger
Long a symbol of fertility and prosperity, from it's farming origins as a hopeful harbinger of a good year ahead, rice thrown at the bride and groom on their wedding day, symbolizes a certain fantasy, of richness raining down.
The world can only hope that the symbol exhibited by the state of the family rice farms of Japan will not be a dark harbinger of a less than prosperous future. The simple beauty of a bright white grain of rice, as an instrument of nutrition and hope for starving nations, deserves a better fate.
Poetry of Rice
Sweet-smelling rice fields!
To our right as we push through,
The Ariso Sea.
One field
did they plant.
I, under the willow.
-Basho
Rice Recipes
The variety of recipes for rice are unending, go to RiceRecipes.Org
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