Category: Cooking

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Rice for diabetics launched

There’s a very odd story in The Hindu. It describes the launch of a “new variety of low glycemic rice“. Low glycemic foods are digested more slowly and create less of a spike in blood sugar, and have been pushed for diabetics, weight loss and sundry other benefits. One of the nice things about basmati rice, quite apart from its wonderful fragrance and flavour, is a relatively low glycemic index (although strictly speaking it has a medium GI). The new rice is not a basmati rice.

Moolgiri pack The rice, called Moolgiri, is marketed by Taj Mahal Agro Industries, and according to independent tests does indeed have a glycemic index of 54, just in the “low” category. That could be very interesting news, especially if Moolgiri is one of the many thousands of rice varieties that just happens to have this property. But the story got murkier the more I looked into it.

For a start, it is not a variety but a trade name. A rice with its own web site! There’s all kinds of information there, but not an awful lot about what exactly makes Moolgiri special. We learn that:

Moolgiri rice is a clear blend of tradition and technology. After ten years of continuous research Tajmahal Agro industries identified suitable traditional grain and developed innovative process to achieve Moolgiri.

There’s also a lot about how it is grown, tested and so on. But you have to dig deeper to discover that the variety itself is called manisamba, and that it

undergoes a patented process to remove 70% of the starch content.

So I did a little more digging, in SINGER, and discovered that there is a rice called Pamani samba, that it was collected in India, and that there is a sample (of unknown status) in the genebank at the International Rice Research Institute. And there the trail goes cold. There seems to be no further information about this wonderful variety. No “special traits” are noted.

All of which is both satisfying and unsatisfying (rather like a meal of high GI rice?). I found the variety. But no more about it. Maybe the special patented process could do the same to any old rice? I doubt it, but you never know. And maybe there are actually rice varieties out there that would have a low GI without a special patented process. I think that’s what I had been hoping, that there existed a rice that, polished and purified, would be have a naturally low glycemic index. Alas, it ain’t so.

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World diet photos

“One picture is worth a thousand words” department: The Time feature I linked to in an earlier post has a fascinating photo essay associated with it, showing the weekly food consumption of 16 families around the world. I hadn’t noticed it until Jeremy pointed it out to me. Seems to me that if you’re trying to stay away from processed foods and have a nice, healthy, balanced diet you’re best off living in Sicily, Egypt, Mexico or Bhutan. Would be great to do something similar at the variety level, for example looking at the diversity within potatoes or wheat used by different families around the world.

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Who’s afraid of trans fats?

In “Fear of Frying,” David Schleifer gives us, in the words of his subtitle, “a brief history of trans fats,” and it’s a fascinating read. Trans fats are partially hydrogenated oils: attaching more hydrogen atoms to the oily backbone turns liquids into solids. First introduced at the turn of the century, they were all the rage by the 1960s because they were easier to use (e.g., in deep frying) and didn’t go rancid quite as quickly, but also because of (never fully substantiated) hype about how bad saturated fats were for you.

Some fifteen years ago, however, studies started to associate them with heart disease, diabetes and infertility. They have recently been banned from New York City restaurants. But unlike big tobacco, big food didn’t “deny the good science, buy some bad science, and try to avoid regulation.” What they did – despite the difficulties and costs involved – is jump on alternatives to trans fats, even before consumers started to change their minds in large numbers. In effect, they fostered perceptions of risk to drum up demand for a product that addressed that risk: value adding and niche marketing through fear. What’s the next big thing? Omega-3s fats, essential nutritionally but destroyed by hydrogenation. But it probably won’t be long before something bad is found out about them too and we all get onto the next bandwagon.

All very scary, but how is this relevant to the subject matter of this blog? Well, each of these shifts in consumer demand required new technologies, including new crop varieties. So, for example, the National Sunflower Association and the United Soybean Board, among others, developed cultivars whose oil does not need partial hydrogenation. But these are liquid, and difficult to use in baked goods, so palm oil is increasingly used, apparently. And Monsanto is projecting unveiling an enhanced omega-3 soybean by 2012.

Ok, so that’s one way to look at the role of agricultural diversity. Another is that you should stay away from processed foods and try to base your diet on a diversity of fresh ingredients, traditionally prepared. Which, by sheer coincidence, is the subject – or one of them – of a Time magazine piece this week on “How the World Eats.”