QUESTIONS OF NUTRITION – WHOLE RICE (BROWN RICE) – SPECIAL DESEASES
The importance of the bran and germ of the rice grain was drastically demonstrated when people in the Orient began to copy those in the West by refining their staple food, their rice. A disease known as beriberi became rife among them and after all the known medicines had been thrown into the combat against the disease without success, a colonial doctor, Dr Eijkman, as well as other researchers, discovered that rice bran alone was able to cure the scourge. This definitely established the fact that beriberi was a deficiency disease, an avitaminosis, not an infectious disease as had been thought previously.
Fortunately, our Western diet is much more varied than that of the Oriental nations and such pronounced deficiencies rarely occur. If our diet lacks one substance or another, the deficiency can usually be compensated for, at least partly, by the substances contained in other foods we eat. However, it is only a partial compensation and we still often suffer from an imbalance in our food intake, as will be discussed in a later section. Many people in the Orient suffered the sad consequences of beriberi, but as soon as they began to take food supplements or returned to their former way of preparing whole rice, their health was restored.
*909/28/1*
Random Posts
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.