Facts About Rice

The technique of making parboiled rice spread from India to the rest of the world. First the rice is soaked in water and excess water drained off. Then the grain is steamed or heated and dried. After this, it is pounded to remove the husk. In this way, the outer layer of the grain turns hard and does not break during milling.

It retains a better shape but is also more nutritious than other rice. Now a fifth of the world’s rice is parboiled. The world understood the importance of the Indian art of making parboiled rice only after paying a heavy price. In 1882 when a Japanese ship returned after a nine-month voyage, twenty-five of its 276 crew were dead, and the rest were listless. It was discovered that they had eaten boiled rice three times a day but this was polished rice from a mill and had its nutritive outer layer removed. The same disease was noticed in Malaysian and Javanese sailors, and it was called beri-beri, which means ‘extreme weakness’ in Sinhalese. In beri-beri the arm and leg muscles become so weak that it is difficult even to move about. (On being fed mill rice even hens fell ill, but recovered when given parboiled rice.) In policing and making rice glossy, vitamins were lost. These vitamins were given name ‘Vitamin B’. Before this discovery nobody knew about vitamins. The Dutch scientist Dr Eijkman was the first to do research on this, and awarded the noble prize in 1929.