Ask me about rice.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about rice.

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Do you have to deal with organic certifications at all in the rice game? I know that's a big mess since certifiers are basically privatized middlemen.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2023 05:53

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 05:12

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I appreciate your well-informed posts on FDA and NOP regulatory; as you indicate, rice has fewer issues than a lot of other commodities, and yeah, organic's an incredible shitpile of bad underlying science.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Jan 20, 2024

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 11:29

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

dino. posted:

From what I recall, the fortification issue is less to do with the manufacturer wanting to do a thing, and more with legislation. Somewhere I read that all the cereal companies and white bread makers had to enrich their products with vitamins and minerals that were stripped away in the milling process when turning it into white ____ grain product. I believe rice in the USA may have been caught up in that same wave of concern.

IMO, no manufacturer is going to voluntarily increase their costs (by fortifying food) if they don�t have to, because those added back in vitamins and whatnot are not free, nor are the processes to add them to the food. That said, if you�re eating more than just plain white rice, you don�t really need to worry about washing away the artificially added vitamins and minerals. You�re going to get more than enough nutrition from other food you�re eating. Let your rice be a starchy delicious thing, and let the rest of your food do the nutritional heavy lifting instead.

The enriched rice standard is available at 21 CFR 137.350.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-137/subpart-B/section-137.350

Of note the standard includes the requirement that unless the packaging says the rice shouldn't be washed, the fortification has to meet specs to ensure a sufficient amount of the enriched substances are retained if it's washed per AOAC methods. I believe milled rice doesn't technically have to be enriched, but there is significant market and public health pressure to do so and it's common practice.

I want to note my disagreement with the idea that you shouldn't care about fortification- it was done because absent the fortification, people who had diets heavy in the fortified foods would, in fact, develop nutrient deficiency conditions, and additionally, fortification programs compensate for substances that aren't predictably naturally occurring in even relatively balanced diets- folic acid being the big example, ending the incidence of an entire category of birth defects. The amount of fortification required is periodically updated to reflect improvements and changes in scientific evidence (though it's slowed due to a lack of stable research funding and general decay of research programs under Republican sabotage). Like vaccines, these are programs that operate mostly silently and vastly reduce human suffering.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2024 07:49

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

VictualSquid posted:

I would be interested in knowing how they prevent the washing off of the fortification.
Do they just put a lot on the rice, or make it insoluble in cold water, or let it soak in?

I'm not knowledgeable about that as much; there's a WHO guideline on rice fortification that does include some discussion of other fortification practices (with the caveat that WHO docs are sometimes very poor quality and there are other issues with this one):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK531758/

# ¿ Mar 22, 2024 10:22

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The point of my response above was that both a) the fortification of enriched rice is commonly intended to be able to withstand washing one way or another, and b) the fortification is not just meant to compensate for deficiencies in the immediate rice if eaten as part of an incomplete diet.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 00:38

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 05:12

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The key findings from that mmwr:

quote:

The birth prevalence of NTDs during the post-fortification period has remained relatively stable since the initial reductions observed during 1999�2000, immediately after mandatory folic acid fortification in the United States. The updated estimate of approximately 1,300 NTD-affected births averted annually during the post-fortification period is slightly higher than the previously published estimate (3). Factors that could have helped contribute to the difference include a gradual increase in the number of annual live births in the United States during the post-fortification period and data variations caused by differences in surveillance methodology. The lifetime direct costs for a child with spina bifida are estimated at $560,000, and for anencephaly (a uniformly fatal condition), the estimate is $5,415 (4); multiplying these costs by the NTD case estimates translates to an annual saving in total direct costs of approximately $508 million for the NTD-affected births that were prevented.

[...]
What is added by this report?

The prevalence of NTDs during the post-fortification period has remained relatively stable since the initial reduction observed immediately after mandatory folic acid fortification in the United States. Using the observed prevalence estimates of NTDs during 1999�2011, an updated estimate of the number of births occurring annually without NTDs that would otherwise have been affected is 1,300.

What are the implications for public health practice?

Current fortification efforts should be maintained to prevent folic acid�sensitive NTDs from occurring. There are still opportunities for prevention among women with lower folic acid intakes, especially among Hispanic women, to further reduce the prevalence of NTDs in the United States.

This is, to be clear, the direct costs of the most easily measured outcomes of one category of fortification not tied to the direct commodity preexisting nutrients.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 05:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about rice.