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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.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by Booga1 on Friday June 08 2018, @09:55PM (2 children)
From the FDA letter listed in the article, the contents of regular rice measurement was "0.07 mg/kg dry weight" whereas the modified rice was "1.26 mg/kg DW (range = 0.504 to 2.35 mg/kg DW)".
Not bad, at about 18x as much as regular rice.
According to WolframAlpha, a serving of rice is 7.1oz(200 grams) dry weight. So, 1/5th of a kilogram for a serving gives you 0.252mg of beta-carotene per serving.
Converting milligrams to micrograms gives 252 micrograms per serving(needed 1080), or a bit under 1/4th of the amount needed to meet the requirements for a nutrient content claim.
Feel free to let me know if I messed up somewhere in the calculations.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:37AM
Except that regular rice isn't really a source to begin with. Eighteen times approximately zero is still pretty minimal.
It's still an improvement, and yeah, in areas where rice is a staple food eaten nearly every meal that might be enough to make a difference. But what the FDA is saying makes sense too. It's not typical in the US to eat enough rice for 252µg to matter. And if you do eat that much rice, presumably you already know you have to import it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by esperto123 on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:49PM
Your calculations seem correct, and to complement, I think the head line is very wrong, the FDA is not saying it has no nutritional benefits, it is just saying the amount of beta-carotene per serving does not require (or grants) a label indicating that it is a good source of it on the packaging of the final product.
But something that the article fails to point out is that golden rice is not for the averege american, or even for the lower tear of american population, who have for better or worse a good and cheap source of varied types of food. This rice is for parts of the world were people pratically only eat rice, beacase it is the only thing they have access to. It is for populations that have children go blind beacuse the litteraly have no other source of vitamin A, and any, even if at not at the recommended amount, is a health benefit.
Golden rice will not affect populations in rich countries, but can change the lives of poor people in a lot of southeast asian countries.