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Eating Too Much Rice Almost Sank the Japanese Navy in 1882
- lotharbot 12y agoSummary: - a diet consisting of white rice lacks in vitamin B1, which causes a debilitating disease called "beriberi" - a naval officer named Kanehiro Takaki discovered this (indirectly) using epidemiology techniques, determining that those who ate more balanced diets did not catch the disease - mixing barley in with rice basically eliminated the disease from the Japanese navy - due to some combination of politics, and worry that the solution was "superstition" (ie, it was similar to a folk remedy, and was not laboratory-tested; many Japanese academics of the time did not trust epidemiological/statistical techniques) the Japanese army rejected the solution and continued to have serious beriberi outbreaks, up until 1905 when they finally decided to give it a chance
- curiouslearn 12y agoGreatly appreciate the summary. Thank you.
- seanwilson 12y agoThanks! TLDRs are looked down upon by some people. There are so many new articles you could read each day though that a short abstract you can read to decide if you want to continue in-depth is essential in my opinion.
- lotharbot 12y agoHere's how I previously explained it: "HN has a strong bias toward allowing people to allocate their time based on their preferences. The tl;dr convention is tremendously useful because it allows people to make an informed decision as to whether or not to read the article, based on a summary which is (typically) more accurate than the headline." It's clear HN appreciates this sort of thing -- the last time I had a comment as heavily upvoted, it was another summary. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8724105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8724105
- seanwilson 12y agoYeah, people equate TLDR with laziness but there's an infinity of new stuff to read so I want to be able to quickly evaluate if I want to read something before spending too much time on it. I don't find articles that have a vague dramatic opening that gets you wondering where it's going works anymore.
- white-flame 12y agoSame here. If I see an in media res opening on a supposedly informative article, I skip down a few paragraphs. If I still can't see the meat of the matter, I skip it. Inform me, don't try to "entice" me towards your embellishments. Ain't nobody got time for that.
- ptaipale 12y agoI, or one, don't really equate TLDR with laziness. I equate with "get rid of all that unnecessary bloat and clickbait headlines". The headline of this article, in my opinion, should have been "too monotonic diet", not "too much rice".
- kragen 12y agoSummaries are great, and extremely useful. But, to me, “TL;DR” just inspires a feeling of contempt: “You think a 1700-word article is too long for you to read? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you have the attention span of a goldfish? Have you ever seen a book?” (using, as my example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9359426. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9359426.)
- lotharbot 12y agoa 1700 word article isn't too long to read. But there are dozens of 1700 word articles (and longer) that make the HN frontpage every day, and most of us want to know which of those are worth reading for us -- whether the article has the kind of "meat" we're going for, whether it's mostly fluff, whether the technical details are relevant to our particular interests, etc. One reason we see so many tl;dr comments even on a very technically inclined place like HN is that articles very often bury their content. We want a thesis out front; we don't want to be strung along for 1600 words and then find the interesting bit between 1601 and 1700.
- gohrt 12y agovery similar story as the discovery and loss of the Scurvy prevention/cure: http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
- Someone1234 12y agoAll the way down this article I was expecting it to be about Scurvy as it hits many of the same issues. Only difference seems to be that Scurvy is vitamin C and Beriberi is vitamin B1. But same overall concept.
- dicemoose 12y agoOne underlying reason for the split between the Imperial Japanese Army, and Navy was that the Army was generally made up of members of the Choshu clan who were rivals of the Satsuma clan that was mostly responsible for the Navy. The two clans put their rivalries aside temporarily to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, but from the Meiji Era the rivalry was responsible for the lack of coordination between the Army, and Navy through the Second World War. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunbatsu#Hambatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunbatsu#Hambatsu
- PhantomGremlin 12y agothe Japanese army rejected the solution The article had a one sentence paragraph about this attitude: Stubborn and blind to the truth, the army was marching towards its biggest beriberi disaster ever. I love those first words Stubborn and blind to the truth Those words so perfectly describe so much of what's happening in the world today. Not 100+ years ago. Today. It reminds me of a quote attributed to Max Planck: Science advances one funeral at a time.
- pyre 12y ago> Limes eventually replaced the lemons The switch to limes resulted in many more cases of scurvy. The citrus cure for scurvy was lost until the discovery of vitamin C. I recall an article about this being on HN. The Brits switch to limes because they were cheaper than lemons.
- pcrh 12y agoPerhaps it was this article [1]. It's fascinating how the cure for scurvy had to be invented twice. [1]http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
- koralatov 12y agoThat's one hell of a post. Thanks for sharing it.
- pdkl95 12y agoI have used this wonderful article for years now as a very good example of how science can arrive at a conclusion that is very, very wrong. In the case of scurvy, dangerously wrong. Science is still the best method of investigation we have, but the history of vitamin C and scurvy is a powerful reminder that in spite of our best efforts and intentions, nature can still surprise us.
- screwedup 12y agoThere's a lot of emphasis in this article on how that era's ideas of what constituted science and medicine blinded them from the truth and cost them lives. What analogous contemporary ideas will people be laughing about in the 22nd century? What parts of how we view science and medicine are costing lives?
- koralatov 12y agoThe thing that springs immediately to my mind for me is the anti-vaccination movement. I really do think it'll be looked back on in a century as a monumentally stupid backlash based on poor 'science' and scaremongering. I think a lot of what is taken as gospel in the field of nutrition will probably be looked back on as barmy or the result of ignorance. The low-fat thing already seems to be going that way.
- the_af 12y agoI thought the anti-vaccination movement was already considered a monumentally stupid idea...
- Jack000 12y agoIt would be more analogous to the story if through a sheer number of improbabilities the antivaxxers are vindicated in the 22nd century.
- fragmede 12y agoActually, the anti-vaccination movement has great relevance here. Much like Takaki's effective treatment was lampooned because of it's similarity to archaic traditional medicine and surely got wrapped up in politics of the time, the anti-vaccination movement has similarly become wrapped up by politics and can no longer sanely be discussed. Takaki most likely had to contend with thinking his cure for beriberi was similarly "monumentally stupid" and "based on poor 'science' and scaremongering", which prevented an objective examination of his experiments.
- Symmetry 12y ago
- Sniffnoy 12y agoPcrh has already linked it below, but it's worth comparing this to the fascinating "Scott and Scurvy"[1], a similar article about scurvy, and how the widely-known citrus cure became "lost knowledge" for a while. The general stroke of "Here's an empirical cure that people won't use because they have a differing theory (that this deficiency disease is actually due to infectious agents)" is of course similar. But the beriberi story seems more just like people foolishly ignoring an empirical cure due to, well, having a contradicting theory; it doesn't seem to have the same component of "here's a series of coincidences that seems to undermine the empirical evidence for the cure in the first place". Also, note that while Takaki correctly identified beriberi as a deficiency disease, he misidentified it as a protein deficiency! Yet his cure still worked well enough, when he could get people to follow it -- which, note, was on top of the difficulty of getting it officially implemented. That's another difference -- if there was any problem getting individual sailors to drink their lemon juice once the British navy started serving it, Cegłowski doesn't mention it. [1]http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
- white-flame 12y agoThe OP article mentioned the British doped the sailors' booze with lemon juice, at least at first.
- Scuds 12y agoI wonder why barley was/is considered a downscale grain compared to rice?
- staunch 12y agoRoman legionaries also disliked being being forced to eat barley and meat, but in lieu of wheat. A lot of it must be to do with taste and quality, but also a desire to not eat like a poor person or barbarian.
- jcl 12y agoIt's because polished white rice took more effort to make, so it was more expensive, so it became associated with the upper classes and success. http://ask.metafilter.com/149004/History-of-white-not-wholegrain-rice-in-Japan http://ask.metafilter.com/149004/History-of-white-not-wholeg...
- lifeformed 12y agoPlus white rice tastes better.
- yongjik 12y agoTry making a "rice bowl" with 100% barley and you will understand. It will taste horrible. (A little bit of mixed barley (and other grains) is fine, but it doesn't take a huge leap to see why people would prefer pure rice.)
- smcl 12y agoWhoah hold up, barley being considered horrible seems like a cultural thing. Certainly in Scotland and Czech barley/kroupy is considered a damn tasty ingredient, I even use it in place of Risotto rice (I acknowledge that it's not the same thing as a rice bowl)
- yongjik 12y agoWell, it's cultural in the sense how you cook rice or barley is cultural, but if you cook 100% barley in the way you cook rice in Japan (or Korea), most people will agree that it objectively tastes worse. (Well, I guess the way some people refuse to have even 5% barley is probably cultural...) I can't speak for Japan, but in case of Korea, generally people don't consider barley horrible. They just find it a bad substitute for rice.
- mreiland 12y agoReally good read, thanks for posting.
- mreiland 12y agoReally good read, thanks for posting.
- sopooneo 12y agoWhy couldn't the cold, laboratory based, German "empirical" approach have lead to the same cure? A commitment to the notion that the disorder was bacterial/viral in nature could cause problems. But empiricism shouldn't, right? They can just have a cold hard study where they isolate 100 people in a lab, and half only get white rice, while have get rice and barley. Then see what happens.
- Xixi 12y agoHow do you get the idea of isolating 100 people in a lab, half with only white rice, and half with rice and barley? You could try hundreds other kind of experiment, so why this one in particular? Specially if you think the cause is bacterial/viral in nature... This is were epidemiology gets very useful: you look at data for correlations, and from there you can design experiments to check for causation.
- sopooneo 12y agoI think what you say makes perfect sense. And I agree completely with the question of "how do you decide what to test?" But in that respect, are the two approaches outlined in the article really at odds with one another? Would it have contradicted the "German" approach to use epidemiology to lead you towards hypothesis? My main point is that it seems the real problem wasn't so much one approach over another, as one side having an unjustified commitment to bacteria/virus as a root cause.
- tim333 12y agoThe "German" approach could have got there in the end but slowly and with huge costs while a bit of common sense could have been quicker, cheaper and saved lives. It reminds me a bit of the obesity epidemic in the US which is probably down to too much consumption of sugary stuff but where the medical establishment only wants to look at FDA style lab studies which you can't actually do - you can't bring up a bunch of kids in a lab, one on sugary stuff, one on a more traditional diet. So millions die unpleasantly of something not much harder to fix than fixing beriberi by putting barley in the diet. At least not much harder to fix from a science point of view. Quite hard economically and politically as there are massive financial interests in pushing sugary junk on kids. I guess that's a bit like the situation in the article where politics were in play.
- perishabledave 12y agoWar is Boring has some really great writing both on current military journalism and historical. If those interest you at all the blog is a must read.
- kijin 12y agoI wonder if Takaki would have had more success if he marketed his solution in the terminology of the dominant paradigm. For example: "Barley seems to contain some kind of chemical that kills the germs that cause beriberi."
- nitrogen 12y agoThat's not just a change in terminology, that would be lying. Please don't do that when marketing anything, least of all medical things.
- kijin 12y agoIt would be lying if Takaki knew that beriberi wasn't caused by germs. But back in the 1870s, he didn't know that. He only knew that something in barley was helping to prevent beriberi, and he was in fact mistaken about what that something was. (He thought it was proteins when it was actually vitamin B1.) So the Antibiotic Barley Theory could have been a reasonable hypothesis. Vitamin C is named "ascorbic" (i.e. anti-scurvy) acid because the people who discovered it were looking for a substance that prevented scurvy, no matter what the mechanism of action. The mechanism of action was only known for sure after the substance was identified.
- Handwash 12y agoAnyone has a source for the comparison between white rice and barley vitamin B1 content? I'm just wondering of how great the difference is that it can help the B1 deficiency.
- decode 12y agoA similar, little-known disease caused by a lack of dietary diversity is pellagra. It's caused by a lack of vitamin B3 (niacin). In the early 1900s it became an epidemic in the southern United States, due to (largely poor, rural) people's diets consisting almost exclusively of corn. The most interesting part of the disease is that corn actually contains vitamin B3, but it cannot be absorbed by humans when eaten by itself. Native people always treated corn meal with lime, which allowed the vitamin B3 to be digested. When Europeans came to the Americas and learned about corn from the native people, they thought it was stupid to put lime in their food so they left that part out. Thus, causing a disease that afflicted 3 million people and killed over 100,000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#History
- kragen 12y agoThis is true. A few clarifications: · the “lime” we’re talking about here is not the fruit, but the strong alkali slaked lime, i.e. whitewash or mortar, made by roasting limestone. You can apparently also use lye (Drano), and I wouldn’t be surprised if fermented urine (lant) also worked, but I really recommend that you know what the fuck you’re doing before you start trying to cook with Drano or construction materials. This may help understand the Europeans’ reluctance. · nixtamalization is done on the whole corn, not on the corn meal. Nixtamalized corn is also known as “hominy”, and if you’re from the US you’ve probably heard of it under that name. It’s been common in the US since colonial times. · When you nixtamalize corn, you don’t leave the lime in your food. You have to rinse it out after the long, slow nixtamalization process. Otherwise, the result is really bitter. · Nixtamalization is indeed a traditional practice with a broad pre-Columbian distribution, but it is almost unknown in South America, even though the native cultures here in South America are much more intact and in many ways less assimilated than in North America; this suggests to me that it may not be true that “Native people always treated corn [...] with lime”. I mean, maybe Tawantinsuyu universally nixtamalized its corn, and then the Spanish stamped out the practice so thoroughly that you can’t find nixtamalized corn in the grocery stores there today, even as a special holiday product like chuño; but it seems much more likely to me that nixtamalization just was not universal or even common there in pre-Columbian times. The pellagra epidemic is one of my favorite examples of how ignorance kills people.
- nalbyuites 12y agoThis is off-topic. But for anyone interested, the manga series "Jin", by Motoka Murakami has a very nice depiction of some of the health issues in Tokyo towards the end of the Edo period. The protagonist is a doctor trained in modern medicine, who gets sent back in time and we see his treatment efforts without modern equipment or medicines.