Show Notes
If you spent time in the low-carb world, rice is about as welcome as a toxic waste dump. It is part of those dreaded whites: white flour, white sugar, and white rice. All a part of the reason we are fat, diabetic, and have every disease one can think of. But then, if you get out and see the world, you will realize that people eat rice daily, are thin as a rail, relatively healthy, and have some of the longest lives on the planet. Today, we will make sense of the madness of rice. While people in the Mediterranean were mostly illiterate, in Asia, they had developed writing, laws, philosophy, governments with elaborate testing for civil servants, and gunpowder. In addition, the evidence shows they circumnavigated the oceans, found a larva that could make silk cloth, and developed fine porcelain. They did this while we were drawing crude paintings in caves. Some of our ancestors looked east and even wrote about this “strange” but highly advanced civilization. This was all possible with grass, we call rice.
Yangtze River Basin Along the basin of the Yangtze River, and elsewhere, was an edible grass that ultimately became rice. You can imagine it was simply gathered until someone learned how to plant it. Wild rice, then, would drop the edible seed as it matured. Replanting those that kept their seed on the plant longer meant the rice was easier to gather. Planting and gathering meant staying in one area, then, with abundance, one had to build storage, and eventually a civilization around rice. Weights, measures, laws, buildings. Once people can exchange for rice, you develop professions, art, philosophy. River basins have great soil, but the unpredictability of floods, so management of the river, canals, and all because of a simple grain. I realize carnivores like to hunt large game as their primal food, but chasing mammals doesn’t lead to a civilization or a brain beyond hunting. Also true today, although the hunting is reserved for determining which type of beef is better, and which store has better prices. Modern carnivore hunters prefer Costco beef, gyms, testosterone, and making fun of people who take statins. One needs a granary to build a civilization.
Rice Roads The ability to grow rice led to the first trade routes, as rice and the dishes that accompany it. From Bryani, to Pilaf and Risotto, to Paella Rice, made its way through trade routes around the world. And with each region, their dishes were accompanied by rice. Spice roads developed on the trails originally made by rice traders, and one might think the spices were there to make the rice even better. Today, we all have our favorite rice dishes. Mine vary between sushi and paella. Every culture accepted rice and made its own dish. Some regions even claim their rice came not from the east, but locally.
Rice and Medicine The first peer-reviewed diet for a chronic disease was the Rice and Fruit Diet, popularized by Walter Kempner out of Duke University. He developed the diet for malignant hypertension, the disease that President Roosevelt died of. This disease was almost uniformly fatal within six months of diagnosis. Kempner developed this low-sodium diet of white rice and fruit. In trials, it not only lowered blood pressure but also improved survival. In the 1960’s, the diet became popular for weight loss, and throughout the United States, “Rice Houses” became a place for weight loss. Many Hollywood celebrities swore by them. Vitamin B1 was arguably the first vitamin Today, we know that thiamine deficiency leads to Beriberi, which was a common and often fatal disease in the Japanese Navy. Kanehiro Takaki noticed sailors who preferred polished white rice, almost exclusively for food, developed beriberi. While officers eating a more varied diet generally did not. Hanehro Takati is credited with saving the Navy by changing its diet. Polished rice removes the husk and endosperm of the rice, which is the main source of fiber and nutrients. Vitamin A is also unavailable in
More from Fork U with Dr. Terry Simpson
With all the spices we have access to, it is amazing how bland recipes have become. I have many cookbooks, some from great chefs, television personalities, and friends. What I am always surprised by is how bland the food has become. People seem to think a bit of salt, pepper, maybe onions, and garlic provide the spices one needs. Perhaps it is because some associate spice with heat. Mostly because many have never experimented with some of those great warm spices available. A pinch of coriander, some freshly ground cumin, a little cardamom, or a touch of cinnamon can turn an ordinary dish into something remarkable. And the most astonishing part is that these spices financed voyages around the world, built cities, created fortunes, and caused people to kill one another. Without the spice trade, it is safe to say that the United States, as we know it, would be vastly different from what it is now. The money loaned to the United States, when we were a fledgling country, came from the wealthy spice merchants from what was considered one of the great hyperempires of the world, based in Amsterdam. But before we go to the birth of the United States, let me take you to the meatball.
Tea: The Drink That Built an Empire—and Helped Break One China had the tea. Britain had the appetite. John Hancock had a business to protect.
MesoAmerica and Chocolate In our series looking at foods that built civilizations, today we are going to stay in the Americas with chocolate. Chocolate has been used as currency, consumed by kings, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and prescribed as medicine. Today, it is a multibillion-dollar industry that wants you to believe that eating chocolate is an act of preventive cardiology. I mean, why not? They convinced us to give chocolate to people we love, eat it when we are happy, when we are sad, when only the dog understands us. Don’t feed chocolate to your dog. And we have done all this with a bitter seed that most of us would probably spit out if we tasted it straight from the tree.
I’ve been doing a series about foods that built civilizations. In this episode, we are talking about the potato. It is difficult to imagine that thousands of years ago, people constructed large buildings, managed rivers, built monuments, and created art. We have glimpses of these civilizations through stories, archaeology, and the structures they left behind, but much of their history has been lost. Imagine, we don’t even know where Cleopatra or Alexander the Great are buried, yet we know their stories. As European powers conquered Indigenous peoples, their languages, cultures, and oral traditions were suppressed. When a language disappears, so are the stories preserved within it. Our clues come from archaeology when we uncover a monument, a building, or an ancient settlement. In the Andes, the potatoes they cultivated were not the Russets, Yukon Golds, or fingerlings you find in the store today. Different colors, shapes, and textures. Adapted to survive the elevations, temperatures, and growing conditions. Biodiversity protected their food supply against frost, disease, and changing environmental conditions. If one variety failed, another might survive. The ancient wisdom of diversity that Andean farmers developed over thousands of years was lost when the potato eventually reached Ireland.
In our series about foods that built civilization, we talked a lot about grains, from wheat to corn to rice. Today, we are taking you to the ocean, with the civilizations that salmon built. From California to the interior of Alaska, salmon, a staple, allowed people to settle into villages, develop complex social networks, art, and trade routes. Those trade routes are as large as the ones in the Mediterranean. Some tribes built communal homes and developed complex art and language. Some were Seafaring tribes with canoes up to 60 feet long that traveled across oceans. All because there was a fish that would return in large numbers to streams and rivers, reliably, predictably. So predictable, the people could build their lives around salmon runs. So much so that some built a calendar not only with lunar cycles, but also with the return of the salmon. Civilizations have always gathered around food and water. The Mediterranean connected people who grew wheat and olives, giving people time to make wine, mine copper, build ships, trade with their neighbors, and occasionally go to war with them. Asia had rice and grain near the great river systems. The reliable calories from rice and grains allowed villages to become cities and to travel by water to trade. Today we are going to my home, from the Ventura River in California to my home state of Alaska.