Polished V/s Unpolished : Health with Mahatma Gandhi

Rice is the most important cereal grain in the diet of more than half of the human race. It is used especially in the wettest parts of the world. It has never found much favour in the United States but is used in small amounts. Among primitive peoples rice is eaten without polishing, in which form it is known as red rice, but it is usually treated so as to lose a large part of its germ. This loss results from the pounding of the kernels in rude mortars. The bran layer, which is richer in mineral salts the endosperm of the seed, is retained in this process.

Attractiveness of rice to the eye is so important a factor commercially that the practice of artificial whitening of the polished kernels has come into vogue.

If rice can be pounded in the villages after the old fashion the wages will fill the pockets of the rice pounding sisters and the rice-eating millions will get some sustenance from the unpolished rice instead of pure starch which the polished rice provides. Human greed, which takes no count of the health or the wealth of the people who come under its heels, is responsible for the hideous rice-mills one sees in all the rice-producing tracts. If public opinion was strong, it will make rice-mills an impossibility by simply insisting on unpolished rice and appealing to the owners of rice-mills to stop a traffic that undermines the health of a whole nation and robs the poor people of an honest means of livelihood.

But who will listen to the testimony of a mere layman on the question of food values? I, therefore, give below an extract from The New Knowledge of Nutrition by Mr. Collum and Simmonds which a medical friend, to whom I had appealed for help, has sent with his approbation

~ Harijan, 26-10-1934

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