Spoiler alert, they were not getting enough Vitamin B1. I have a tool that breaks down nutritional densities on a per calorie basis. You can, for instance set

Spoiler alert, they were not getting enough Vitamin B1. I have a tool that breaks down nutritional densities on a per calorie basis. You can, for instance set the slider to B1 and see what foods contain the highest concentrations of B1: https://kale.world/c https://kale.world/c You'll notice that unenriched rice noodles only contain 3% of your Vitamin B1 needs in a 200 calorie serving. Note: that these days the issue is less likely to come up because white rice and white flours are often enriched with those Vitamins (similar to the way that cereals often are enriched with the vitamins they're missing) But, they also seem to suggest it might be lack of protein which I find harder to believe. Rice is 9% protein which is significantly more than the WHO's minimum recommendation of protein. I know some countries like the US state 10%, but that's double what the World health organization recommends.