6 ms·

Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? What is your evidence? I always thought that brown ric

Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? What is your evidence? I always thought that brown rice was eaten mainly by Westerners in the 20th Century whose dietary options were varied and plentiful enough that they didn’t notice the anti-nutritive effects of the bran and germ. And maybe also by East Asians millenia ago when rice culture was new and still being explored. Now if you were to say instead that vitamin A deficiency became a problem in East Asia only with the introduction (millennia ago) of the practice of getting most of one’s calories from rice, I would tend to believe you.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? What is your evidence? Japanese commoners prior to the post-WW2 era mostly ate brown rice, white rice was eaten only by the rich and powerful. Even today, "hakumai"/"shiroi gohan" (white rice) still holds some of that special regard compared to "genmai" (brown rice), and that's despite the latter now being known as a vastly superior source of nutrients. I am not familiar with the food histories of other asian countries, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are similar.
Hizonner 3y ago
> Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? Everywhere. > During what centuries roughly? At all times up until at least the late 19th century. > What is your evidence? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rice > I always thought that brown rice was eaten mainly by Westerners in the 20th Century whose dietary options were varied and plentiful enough that they didn’t notice the anti-nutritive effects of the bran and germ. And maybe also by East Asians millenia ago when rice culture was new and still being explored. That's insane. White rice was extremely labor intensive to produce until machines started doing it.
- hollerith 3y ago
  > White rice was extremely labor intensive to produce until machines started doing it Here is someone producing rice without any machine that is “95% white” (less than 5 percent of the bran remains). In fact, when using this primitive tech the bran and germ seem to come off as an unavoidable side effect of removing the husk, which no one suggests should be left on the rice grain and no one eats AFAIK. To make it easy for you to verify my “95% white” assertion, I have “jumped” to a close-up of the rice just before cooking, but of course to verify that no machine is used, you have to watch from the start of the video (to minute 9). https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525 https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    Nobody said it could not be done. From you video it's hard to judge if it is or not extremely labor intensive, but the description of the video seems to suggest it “the fact that it's very tiring and laborious”. If it takes 2 hours, for instance, of additional work to get such rice for every meal without any nutritional benefit, people aren't gonna do it on a daily basis and only do so for special events and stuff while keeping eating brown rice most of the time.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      The process depicted in the video is not to turn brown rice to white rice: it is to make rice edible at all. The video starts with harvesting the rice and ends with cooking the rice. If you are not a visual person but rather an auditory person, you can hear a narrator in this next video say, "pounding . . . removes the husk and the bran layers" (emphasis mine). Rice with the bran layer removed is white rice. The technique (mortar and pestle) depicted in the 2 videos I linked to seems to be able to produce only rice that is between about 90% and 99% white, and to get the 90%-white rice, you probably have to put up with an annoying amount of inedible rice husk in your food because (again) removing the husk removes the bran as a side effect. The second video goes on to say that "there are some locals" (in the Philippines) who are still using the technique: https://youtu.be/bkSEpVnlVv8?si=36mTEWV4xM1xtsfB&t=162 https://youtu.be/bkSEpVnlVv8?si=36mTEWV4xM1xtsfB&t=162 --so, the burden is on you to provide evidence that brown rice can be made at all without using machines that only became available after 1750.
littlestymaar 3y ago
> Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? My understanding is that it was the usual way of doing so until mechanization made it affordable. > What is your evidence? I remembered reading it on acoup, and that's indeed the case: > Consequently, while a diet of mostly brown rice can be healthy, a diet overwhelmingly of white rice leads to Thiamine deficiency, known colloquially as beriberi. My impression from the literature is that this wasn’t as much an issue prior to the introduction of mechanical milling processes for rice. Mechanical milling made producing white rice in quantity cheap and so it came to dominate the diet to the exclusion of brown rice, producing negative health effects for the poor who could not afford to supplement their rice-and-millet diet with other foods, or for soldiers whose ration was in rice. But prior to that mechanical milling, brown rice was all that was available for the poor, which in turn meant less Thiamine deficiency among the lower classes of society. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/04/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-addendum-rice/ https://acoup.blog/2020/09/04/collections-bread-how-did-they... Edit: now that I looked up on Wikipedia, Thiamine is actually vitamin B1, not Vitamin A, so THIS IS NOT THE SAME DEFICIENCY and I stand corrected. Too bad I can't update my comment above anymore, because it's conveying false information based on an incorrect understanding of mine…
- hollerith 3y ago
  I have evidence that seems to contradict acoup’s assertion that “prior to that mechanical milling, brown rice was all that was available for the poor” at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258263

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? What is your evidence? Japanese commoners prior to the post-WW2 era mostly ate brown rice, white rice was eaten only by the rich and powerful. Even today, "hakumai"/"shiroi gohan" (white rice) still holds some of that special regard compared to "genmai" (brown rice), and that's despite the latter now being known as a vastly superior source of nutrients. I am not familiar with the food histories of other asian countries, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are similar.

Hizonner 3y ago

> Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? Everywhere. > During what centuries roughly? At all times up until at least the late 19th century. > What is your evidence? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rice > I always thought that brown rice was eaten mainly by Westerners in the 20th Century whose dietary options were varied and plentiful enough that they didn’t notice the anti-nutritive effects of the bran and germ. And maybe also by East Asians millenia ago when rice culture was new and still being explored. That's insane. White rice was extremely labor intensive to produce until machines started doing it.

hollerith 3y ago
> White rice was extremely labor intensive to produce until machines started doing it Here is someone producing rice without any machine that is “95% white” (less than 5 percent of the bran remains). In fact, when using this primitive tech the bran and germ seem to come off as an unavoidable side effect of removing the husk, which no one suggests should be left on the rice grain and no one eats AFAIK. To make it easy for you to verify my “95% white” assertion, I have “jumped” to a close-up of the rice just before cooking, but of course to verify that no machine is used, you have to watch from the start of the video (to minute 9). https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525 https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  Nobody said it could not be done. From you video it's hard to judge if it is or not extremely labor intensive, but the description of the video seems to suggest it “the fact that it's very tiring and laborious”. If it takes 2 hours, for instance, of additional work to get such rice for every meal without any nutritional benefit, people aren't gonna do it on a daily basis and only do so for special events and stuff while keeping eating brown rice most of the time.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    The process depicted in the video is not to turn brown rice to white rice: it is to make rice edible at all. The video starts with harvesting the rice and ends with cooking the rice. If you are not a visual person but rather an auditory person, you can hear a narrator in this next video say, "pounding . . . removes the husk and the bran layers" (emphasis mine). Rice with the bran layer removed is white rice. The technique (mortar and pestle) depicted in the 2 videos I linked to seems to be able to produce only rice that is between about 90% and 99% white, and to get the 90%-white rice, you probably have to put up with an annoying amount of inedible rice husk in your food because (again) removing the husk removes the bran as a side effect. The second video goes on to say that "there are some locals" (in the Philippines) who are still using the technique: https://youtu.be/bkSEpVnlVv8?si=36mTEWV4xM1xtsfB&t=162 https://youtu.be/bkSEpVnlVv8?si=36mTEWV4xM1xtsfB&t=162 --so, the burden is on you to provide evidence that brown rice can be made at all without using machines that only became available after 1750.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> Where was brown rice the traditional way of eating rice (for non-elites)? During what centuries roughly? My understanding is that it was the usual way of doing so until mechanization made it affordable. > What is your evidence? I remembered reading it on acoup, and that's indeed the case: > Consequently, while a diet of mostly brown rice can be healthy, a diet overwhelmingly of white rice leads to Thiamine deficiency, known colloquially as beriberi. My impression from the literature is that this wasn’t as much an issue prior to the introduction of mechanical milling processes for rice. Mechanical milling made producing white rice in quantity cheap and so it came to dominate the diet to the exclusion of brown rice, producing negative health effects for the poor who could not afford to supplement their rice-and-millet diet with other foods, or for soldiers whose ration was in rice. But prior to that mechanical milling, brown rice was all that was available for the poor, which in turn meant less Thiamine deficiency among the lower classes of society. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/04/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-addendum-rice/ https://acoup.blog/2020/09/04/collections-bread-how-did-they... Edit: now that I looked up on Wikipedia, Thiamine is actually vitamin B1, not Vitamin A, so THIS IS NOT THE SAME DEFICIENCY and I stand corrected. Too bad I can't update my comment above anymore, because it's conveying false information based on an incorrect understanding of mine…

hollerith 3y ago
I have evidence that seems to contradict acoup’s assertion that “prior to that mechanical milling, brown rice was all that was available for the poor” at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258263