The Killing Machine
The machine rice pervades the world. The evil of this must be noted well. A little thinking will disclose the truth at once. No one need be exasperated at the machine so long as it functions in its proper sphere. But when it tries to kill its own inventors by devouring the vitality of food stuffs, it has to be rejected and confined to its proper corner. The dangerous onslaught of this machine is well seen in the matter of this rice.
Food is classified into two kinds the primary and the protective. Perfect health could be secured and maintained by a consumption of a variety of food stuffs imparting to the body various essential ingredients. The staple foods of various people living in differing climes differ and they are fixed to correlate climatic, economic and agricultural conditions. These are consumed alone or in conjunction with other subsidiary articles. This is the staple or the primary food. This by itself does not give all the elements of a complete diet.
This has to be supplemented by various other articles in smaller quantities to secure different essential elements. This diet supplement can be called the protective food. Grains like rice, wheat, ragi etc. form the staple food and milk, vegetables, fruits etc. come under the category of protective foods. From the latter the body has to get whatever is low or lacking in the primary diet, like protein, fat, salt, vitamins, etc.,
Rice requires to be supplemented by a greater quantity of protective foods. Whole rice though very good by itself is insufficient and much more so the machine, high polished, rice. When only the outer husk of paddy is removed the resulting rice is called whole rice.
Outer portion of Rice
Most of the protien contents are to be found in the bran of whole rice. What is eaten now is starchy remnants. The machine removes completely the bran. This reduces the protein contents by one-third. Half the quantity of phosphorous and iron is also lost. Three fourths of vitamin B is removed. When protein is lost, growth is affected. The person will be an underweight. Weakness will increase. Reduction of phosphorous and calcium will weaken the bones and cut down their growth. The quality of the blood also will deteriorate due to want of iron. The red corpuscles in the blood depend on iron for their existence. These red corpuscles are the carriers of oxygen from the lungs to the various parts and tissues in the body. Very bad results will follow if the iron goes on declining.
No one can think coolly of the loss of the precious vitamin B. Those who are deficient in Vitamin B will suffer from impurity of blood and skin diseases. High polishing and the loss of the outer layers of rice lead to the deficiency condition called Beri-Beri. The machine first kills most of the bran. What little may remain sticking to the soft inner bran is removed by repeated rinsing and washing, before cooking.
Deterioration of Health
There is a story about the discovery of this vitamin. It relates to the Dutch East Indies. After the advent of the machine, rice began to be highly polished. The grain would be actually shining white. This white rice used to be reserved for human consumption and the rough unpolished variety was being thrown away to the cattle. No one would touch it. An epidemic sprang up. All of a sudden people would collapse on the roads and in houses and die. Doctors could not discover the nature of the disease.
Though these persons had been feeding fully, the examination of their blood showed signs of starvation. It was puzzle which the doctors could not solve. Savants began experimenting with animals to isolate the cause and discover the cure. One of them kept a number of fowls and commenced feeding them with the staple diet of the local population, the beautiful white rice and nothing else. The fowls grew weaker day by day. Some died and some were on the point of death.
Each showed symptoms of starvation. The doctor wanted to continue his interesting experiment on the fowls, devise a cure for them and then solve the problem for the human sufferers. Unfortunately for his research, an urgent call came over from the Headquarters that he was wanted at once to combat the spreading epidemic of deaths in other centres. This savant called his servant and gave him strict directions to continue the experiment and feed the fowls with the high-grade costly white rice. He then went away.
The servant carried out the orders of his master for one day. His heart could not brook throwing away such good valuable pearl like rice to the fowls! They could put up with the useless coarse variety that is discarded or fed to the cattle. From the garbage tins, he reclaimed a sufficient quantity of this rough dull grain and began feeding the fowls. After about ten days the Doctor returned. To his angry surprise he found that all the fowls which he left dying, looked hale, and were growing. They were fat and comfortable and there was not a suggestion of any illness, much less of the un-nameable terror disease about them.
He took his servant to task and accused him of spoiling his valuable experiment He asked him what he had done with the fowls He wanted to know on what he was feeding them. His man-servant had not the means and the heart to procure rich food for the fowls he had left dying. The poor servant was pained at this ungrateful master. He had economised and saved for him much valuable white rice at the cost of the useless rubbish of rough rice. The master wanted to know on what the fowls were getting fat. He watched with surprise the servant feeding the fowls with the stuff from the garbage tin, the rough unpolished rice.
This was all the change the servant had by accident introduced into the experiment. And what a miraculous, God-sent change! The fowls had been snatched away from the jaws of death. The doctor’s brain worked fast. This whole grain had something which saved life, and prevented this terrible condition, which the beautiful white rice did not have. A comparison of the two, easily showed that the mysterious essential ingredient must be hiding in the bran, milled, polished and thrown away.
He got a quantity, of the bran. Without mentioning a word he began cooking these outer rinds of whole rice and feeding a few patients suffering from this strange condition. In two or three days they showed more awareness and strength and in a week they were actually coming back to normal. A few days more and these saved, from the portals of death, became fully cured. They were much more vigorous than before and proceeding on with their usual occupations.
Then began the isolation of the ingredient lying hidden. Names began to be given. The condition which came to be known as beri-beri was caused by the lack of something in the white polished rice. The cure is effected by the simple addition to the diet of these discarded husks. Vitamin B came to be named and a series sprang up, Vitamin B complex, under this main heading. To this Doctor and to that bungling servant, humanity owes the modern discovery of this essential vitamin and the necessity of the preservation of the bran of rice for health and vitality. Things are no longer in doubt as to which rice should be consumed. But what shall we say of a perverted section of humanity and its pandering cookerynote writers! It would be plain now as to why we went to the extent of demanding a deportation of such people from the midst of poor, rice eating inhabitants! The rich and the middle class want the polished rice. Who thinks of the incalculable harm to the poor?
How can these protect themselves against this devitalised rice, with costly luxuries of fruits, milk and what not, in poverty ridden India? Alas, the poor also now, want the polished rice only!
The day the machine swept into the field of rice, the health of the people, especially those whose staple food came from rice, took a steep decline. Crores of rupees are lost to Society. The sky is clouded by the fattening, rice-machine lords. Down below spreads a miasma of death and disease. Why have not machine rice-eaters lost their lives? The reason is not far to seek. Smaller or greater quantities of protective foods are consumed and to some extent the life is saved. The lowered vitality contracts consumption or some other disease and death is attributed to that and not to the essential cause, the high-polished rice.
What stupidity? Why manufacture this rice killing, nay man- killing machine by pouring lakhs of rupees? Why polish the silk-coated handsome-wholesome rice into the skeleton-bled-white stuff? Why again lose the essential stuff on hand and squander money to replace what is lost through costly means? Why allow poverty to take a hand in this dire show, bereft of protective food, to succumb to Doctors and death? Millions of tons of rice, nearly one fourth of our total production is lost to the people. Why begging bowls to replace the lost? What an illusion, worst of all illusions, do the people hug to their boosm!
May it please you my fellow countrymen, wake up to the truth now at least!