Aussies scour their flora for cool fruits.
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.
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.
Making sure nutrition is maintained
Truffling through the special issue of African Journal of Food Agriculture Nutrition and Development about African Leafy Vegetables, one paper caught my eye: Changes in Beta-Carotene, Ascorbic Acid and Sensory Properties in Fermented, Solar-Dried and Stored Cowpea Leaf Vegetables, by Muchoki, Imungi and Lamuka. But only because a couple of days ago a different story — Sunlight Reduces the Value of Moringa Leaves — had done the same. Both tell the same basic story, that even all-powerful traditional leafy vegetables need care in their preparation if they are to deliver the nutritional benefits they are capable of.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find a copy of Ritah Namutebi’s poster on Moringa oleifera, so I have only the newspaper report to go on. Namutebi picked Moringa leaves in the morning, at midday and in the evening and dried them in direct sunlight or in the shade. Those dried in direct sunlight lost 35-60% of their vitamin A, while those dried in shade lost less, 11-15%. ((Actually there’s a conflict in the report. One paragraph gives the figures I have quoted. The following one says that shade drying loses up to 25%, rather than 15%)) There is no information on the effect of time of picking; presumably it made no difference.
The cowpea paper is a whole heap more detailed, with three different treatment methods and six different storage regimes. Bottom line:
- Fresh leaves contain roughly six times more ascorbic acid (vitamin C) than dried leaves, but the type of drying makes no difference.
- Drying makes no difference to the amount of beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A.
- During storage, both the container (polyethylene bags vs Kraft paper) and the temperature affect the levels of vitamins in a manner that depends on how the leaves were initially prepared.
- At each temperature, polyethylene preserved the vitamins better than Kraft paper.
There’s more, I’m sure, to be gained from this work, but the crucial point is that it is as important to devise appropriate methods of preserving neglected and underutilized species as it is to promote their use in the first place.
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.
Buffett sweet potato balls
Lets get this part out of the way: search Google for “Buffett sweet potato,” having seen an announcement at Papgren, and the number 3 link is for Buffett sweet potato balls. But that’s not what I was after.
I was after details of a US$3 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to enhance sweet potato for Africa. The project has two aims: to boost resistance to a couple of diseases — sweet potato feathery mottle virus and sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus — and to improve the nutritional content of sweet potatoes, most notably by increasing folate, iron and zinc.
Excellent. Africa needs higher yields and more nutritious diets. I don’t know what approach the Danforth will take, but as they’ve teamed up with the Monsanto company it is possible that there will be some direct manipulation of DNA involved. Again, excellent, because sweet potato is generally reproduced by taking clones — cuttings, actually, often called slips — from parent material, so farmers should be able to distribute any material they receive. But, I wonder, just how many different varieties will the project engineer? And isn’t there a risk that this effort, particularly if it is successful, will blanket Africa with a few genetically similar varieties that do not have the diversity to withstand the next disease epidemic, making that, when it comes, all the more disastrous?
Rhetorical questions, I know, and ones that I’ve asked before. The funny part is, nobody else seems to be asking them. That Google search, in news? Precisely two items, and one of those is essentially the press release. The other is kinda fun.