Marion Nestle, PhD, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita reports via Food Politics
The FDA has concluded its "consultation process" on Golden Rice. This, you may recall, is rice bioengineered to contain genes for beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A.
The FDA's letter to IRRI concluding the consultation [PDF] includes this statement:
Although GR2E ["Golden"] rice is not intended for human or animal food uses in the United States, when present, it would be a producer's or distributer's [sic] responsibility to ensure that labeling of human and animal foods marketed in the United States, meets applicable legal requirements. Although the concentration of ß-carotene in GR2E rice is too low to warrant a nutrient content claim, the ß-carotene in GR2E rice results in grain that is yellow-golden in color.
The FDA's analysis of the science [PDF] concludes that this rice Is unlikely to be toxic or allergenic. It also concludes that although the rice contains higher amounts of ß-carotene than non-modified rice, people in the U.S. are unlikely to eat much of it and in any case the amounts would decline due to storage, processing, and cooking.
In any case, the amounts are not high enough to merit a nutrient-content claim.
This rice has long been promoted as a means to solve problems of vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. Will it? We are still waiting to find out.
What does "too low to warrant a nutrient content claim" mean?
The FDA's rules for nutrient content claims [PDF] (go to pages 91 and 92) say:
- "High", "Rich in", or "Excellent source of" means that a standard food portion contains 20% or more of the daily value for that nutrient.
- "Good source", "Contains", or "Provides" means 10% to 19% of the daily value per standard serving.
- "More", "Fortified", "Enriched", "Added", "Extra", or "Plus" means 10% or more of the daily value than an appropriate reference food.
The daily value for beta-carotene [PDF] is complicated because it is a precursor of vitamin A; 12 micrograms of beta-carotene are equivalent to one vitamin A unit. The standard for adults and children is 900 vitamin A units or 900 x 12 for beta-carotene = 10,800 micrograms.
One serving of Golden Rice must provide less than 10% of that amount (1,080 micrograms).
For comparison, one small carrot provides about 4000 micrograms of beta-carotene.
Previous: Where's the Golden Rice?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @08:43PM (14 children)
What does the behavior of people have to do with the nutritional content of a food? If no one ate salad anymore would that stop being nutritious according to the FDA?
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday June 08 2018, @09:19PM (7 children)
Exactly.
It was never intended for the US market.
In the US
We don't eat that much rice.
Because of this Rice has a long shelf life.
We can get carrots all year around - cheap.
In other parts of the world:
They eat a lot of rice.
Rice is consumed very quickly - not stockpiled, harvested year around.
Carrots and other out-of-season crops are simply not available.
The intent was never to have the rice provide 100% of daily ß-carotene requirement, any more than iodized salt was intended to provide 100% of daily iodine requirement.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @09:58PM (4 children)
[Outside USA,] Rice is [..] harvested year around.
Carrots and other out-of-season crops are simply not available
Any farmers|folks in flyover country who can verify that grain -will- grow at a time of year when veggies won't?
Is there a change in the yield with season?
TFA also mentions that even a -puny- carrot will do better than the grain WRT beta carotene.
.
I've wondered if a Fresnel lens|parabolic reflector that was set up to track the sun and direct the light|warmth onto a garden plot would gain anything WRT the growing season.
(I do know that greenhouses|cold frames work.)
Oooo and I saw a cool thing the other week about big concrete parabolics being used in UK pre-WWII for detecting inbound Krauts.
Mirror mirror on sea wall, spot those airships, make Kaiser bawl [theregister.co.uk]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday June 08 2018, @11:33PM (2 children)
In the parts where such wheat is grown it often snows but not so much that the ground stays covered with it.
(I lived in Moscow when my Dad was a grad student at the U of I.)
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:11AM (1 child)
Named by propagandists.
It's planted in the autumn, it stays basically dormant for the winter, and doesn't become useful for humans until late spring.
...unless they plan on turning it into hay while the weather is cold.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:11AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:08AM
Well this is rice we're talking about it's not a grain that's grown so often in the US, and no, I don't think it's going to be growing in the US when other veggies aren't. But in Thailand, Laos, China, India, etc. - nations which grow and consume the huge amounts of rice - there are probably areas where rice can be grown year round. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_field says this is true specifically in Myanmar, it's not going to be true everywhere, but probably significant portions of neighboring countries can do the same.
That said, those very same areas can probably also do the same with vegetable crops, at least I would expect that to be true. I've farmed, but I've never farmed in the tropics.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:53AM
In other parts of the world they didn't need this sort of bullshit because their native diets included plenty of leafy greens. That is until foreign bankers came in and insisted that the farmers switch to only growing rice for export rather than a combination of rice and various vegetables.
Golden rice itself exists only as an expensive remedy for foreign investors insisting on the farmers only growing cash crops and wanting to sell the farmers things that they have no use for.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:21AM
Actually, I believe that iodized salt is intended to supply 100% of iodine. Iodine is one of those minerals where some soils have none and if you lived there, you were very likely to have an iodine deficiency.
Wiki seems to support my believe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday June 08 2018, @09:20PM (4 children)
Here's what the report actually says:
So if you replaced all rice eaten with this strain of golden rice, which is unlikely, then you would get 10% of your daily value of beta carotene from the rice alone.
Since the 11.8 kg / 26 lbs number is only the average annual consumption, maybe outliers could benefit. If you eat 60 kg of rice per year, you could get half your daily value.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EvilSS on Friday June 08 2018, @09:47PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @10:32PM
Just because the average person eats 11.8 kg of rice annually doesn't mean I or you do, so I don't see why any nutritional finding should be based on that. Personally I eat almost no rice.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Friday June 08 2018, @11:18PM
https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per-capita/ [helgilibrary.com]
Global average is over 50kg per person per year..
http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/pdfs/fact-sheets/Rice%20is%20nice.pdf [jamieshomecookingskills.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @08:13AM
A single cap of uncooked rice is 175g while cooking it amounts to 200g total.
175g X 365 = 63.875kg
One cap of golden rice a day ("standard food portion/serving") will satisfy half daily beta-carotene requirements. 2 caps (120kg per year) will satisfy all beta-carotene requirements.
Conclusion: Double standard.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:54AM
A lot. The more often you eat a food, the lower the 'safe' dose of many different contaminants is. Arsenic is one example. It's found in lots of foods, it's perfectly normal and can't be avoided, but if you get too much it's also dangerous, potentially deadly even.
Now in the US one of the main ways rice is consumed by humans is in baby food or cereal, and IIRC our standards for those particular applications are reasonably high, about the same as the EU. But when you get to bags of rice in the store for cooking, statistics show most Americans eat that stuff only occasionally, now and then, and therefore much higher levels of arsenic are allowed. Ironically, China, hardly a place you expect to see good food and safety standards, rejects US rice for failing to meet their standards - because their standards are based on statistics showing a lot of their people eat rice virtually every meal.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?