rice
Jeff Suzuki
Regarding rice, Angharad writes:
>And it travels very well, doesn't spoil if it's kept even moderately
>dry, and keeps essentially forever.
Er, a proviso: this is certainly true for white rice, which is why
it's white. It's like this, see....
Rice in its "natural" state is brown. White rice is hulled brown
rice. The hull contains oils, which will go rancid rather quickly.
(If you keep brown rice but don't use it often, keep it in the freezer
to keep this unfortunate event from occurring) Brown rice also
contains one of the B vitamins, which prevents beri-beri.
Rich people ate white rice. Poor people ate brown rice. Guess who
got those weird dietary deficiency diseases?
Trivia question: how many other diseases can you think of that were
"rich people's diseases". And how many "poor people's diseases" were
there (that could be traced to dietary deficiencies). And name
them....and how to cure them....
Fujimoto
Terry Nutter
Fujimoto writes,
>>And it travels very well, doesn't spoil if it's kept even moderately
>>dry, and keeps essentially forever.
>
>Er, a proviso: this is certainly true for white rice, which is why
>it's white. It's like this, see....
>
>Rice in its "natural" state is brown. White rice is hulled brown
>rice. The hull contains oils, which will go rancid rather quickly.
>(If you keep brown rice but don't use it often, keep it in the freezer
>to keep this unfortunate event from occurring) Brown rice also
>contains one of the B vitamins, which prevents beri-beri.
>
>Rich people ate white rice. Poor people ate brown rice. Guess who
>got those weird dietary deficiency diseases?
Do you have any evidence that dietary deficiency diseases are diseases
of the rich in period? Certainly adjectives like "scrofulous", which
literally refer to having such diseases, are normally applied to the
lower classes.
Let's do a quick reality check. I eat almost no brown rice these
days. I'm in no danger of beri-beri. Really. For one thing, I eat
meat. It's a very rich source of B vitamins. There are lots of others
in a normal upper-class English diet of the high middle ages, just as
there are lots of others in mine.
Dietary deficiency diseases are normally diseases of the _lower_
classes, because they can't get enough of _anything_ to eat, and
because their diets tend to be highly concentrated in whatever is
most common in the area. The real protection against them is not
to eat any particular "unprocessed" food, but to eat lots of different
stuff.
I suspect that the real reason that Europeans overwhelmingly ate
white rice in period is, as you point out, that it travels better.
>Trivia question: how many other diseases can you think of that were
>"rich people's diseases".
Gout.
> And how many "poor people's diseases" were
>there (that could be traced to dietary deficiencies). And name
>them....and how to cure them....
Scrofula. Rickets. Scorbitus. Scurvy. (Those are the ones I can
think of off the top of my head.) Eat lots of vegetables, fruits,
in some cases meats and grains, for rickets dairy and sunshine (I
think it's mostly vitamin D deficiency). I don't know about how
poor people in period came to have it, though there are skeletal
remains that show it. Maybe miners? I don't think you'll get it
in the space of a winter, and I'd have thought that normal labor
took most people outside often enough that they'd generate enough
vitamin D from sun exposure. Then again, maybe some other deficiency
interacts with the ability to form vitamin D in response to the sun;
I'm not up on this sort of thing.
Overall, have a varried diet.
And then there's starvation....
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
Andrea Marie Habura
Well, lessee. For rich peoples' diseases, lead poisoning in ancient Rome and
(I assume) among noble ladies who used lead oxide as a cosmetic. Polio was a `
rich person's disease between about 1880 and 1940 in America at least.
Poor peoples' diseases: Scurvy was a real problem in the British Navy in the
18th century. I understand it was cured by bringing citrus fruits onto the
ships (scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency).
Andrea (Alison doesn't know diddly about this)
Dennis O'Connor
hab...@vccnw02.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura) writes:
] Fujimoto asked about rich and poor peoples' diseases:
]
] Polio was a `rich person's disease between about 1880 and 1940
] in America at least.
I thought polio was a viral disease : what mechansim could make the
rich more succeptable to it than the poor ?
] Poor peoples' diseases: Scurvy was a real problem in the British Navy in the
] 18th century. I understand it was cured by bringing citrus fruits onto the
] ships (scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency).
This doesn't make it neccesarily a "poor person's" disease : vitamin C
is available in many fresh vegatable, so I doubt it was a common
diseaese among poor landlubbers. And I imagine rich sailors got
it too, before the cause was understood. Just speculation.
--
Dennis O'Connor doco...@sedona.intel.com
Intel i960(R) Microprocessor Division Solely responsible for what I do.
thomas wrentmore barnes
>
>Well, lessee. For rich peoples' diseases, lead poisoning in ancient Rome and
>(I assume) among noble ladies who used lead oxide as a cosmetic. Polio was a `
>rich person's disease between about 1880 and 1940 in America at least.
>
Add diseases like alcoholism (there's a reason why the
expression "Drunk as lords" got coined), heart disease, gout, lead
poisoning from adding sugar of lead to wine, accidental injuries like
falls from horses, or getting hurt while hunting or in a tourney, and
being poisoned by a political rival. Oh yeah, dental caries. Lots of
sugar was a luxury until the last couple of centuries.
>Poor peoples' diseases: Scurvy was a real problem in the British Navy in the
>18th century. I understand it was cured by bringing citrus fruits onto the
>ships (scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency).
>
Various spinal and skeletal injuries from overwork, injuries
associated with working with farm animals and tools, burns (especially
to women who worked around a fire a lot in long skirts, and babies who
were left by the fire in swaddling clothes), vitamin deficiencies -
goiters (shortage of Iodine - found in sea salt and sea food), pellegra
due to lack of protien, scurvy (lack of vitamin C esp. in the winter and
spring before the fresh veggies came in), starvation, various horrible
occupational diseases, increased risk of catching all sorts of diseases
due to poorer sanitation and poorer diet.
(BTW - the slang term "limey" for a British sailor came from the
RN's tradition of issuing their sailors a tot of lime or lemon juice to
ward off scurvy c. 1800.)
Check out
Barbara Hanawalt's "The Ties That Bound" for discussion of
medieval family ties and mortality. (She used English coroner's records
to figure out who was doing what in English Medieval villages.
Appearantly there was a shocking mortality of babies who died of burns
sustained when sparks from a fire landed in their cradles because the
baby had been placed near the fire to keep it warm.)
Philip Ziegler's "The Black Death" for a discussion of the
Plague of 1348-51. It gives a discussion of who got the plague and
reasons as to why they might have gotten infected.
Thomas (Lothar would have unscientific and distinctly
un-politically correct views as to why the poor get the diseases they
do.)
Jeff Suzuki
>================================================
>1 cup washed rice
>1 cup water
>
>Soak rice for about an hour before cooking. Add water, bring to a
>boil and boil off the water. Remove from heat and cover; let steam
>for five minutes or until it reaches the desired consistency. Turn
>rice and serve.
>================================================
Ranvaig adds:
>I would add that the rice is drained after soaking.
Well...oops. Yes, I meant to say that. If you don't, you'll end up
with rice porridge, which is great if you happen to have gastric
ulcers or something, but rather revolting otherwise.
The alternative is to add about a quarter cup more water than the
recipe calls for, and allow the rice to soak in that water before
putting it over the stove.
Fujimoto
Andrea Marie Habura
Yes, polio is viral. However, the symptoms that are produced by a poliovirus
infection vary depending on the state of the immune system of the victim.
Immature immune systems (found in young children) respond to poliovirus
infections with a slight fever. Mature ones (older kids and adults) respond
with the crippling disease polio.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, poor kids tended to live in
somewhat grubby conditions, and were exposed young. Wealthy kids lived in
well-scrubbed environments, and weren't exposed until they really started
getting into contact with the hoi polloi, at about age 10. Voila! Polio as an
upper-class disease. Of course, modern sanitation gives almost any unimmunized
child the opportunity to catch poliovirus late. Thank God for Sabin and Salk.
Andrea (Alison's 20th century persona)
Mary Shafer
Dennis> hab...@vccnw02.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura) writes: ]
Dennis> Fujimoto asked about rich and poor peoples' diseases: ] ]
Dennis> Polio was a `rich person's disease between about 1880 and 1940
Dennis> ] in America at least.
Dennis> I thought polio was a viral disease : what mechansim could
Dennis> make the rich more succeptable to it than the poor ?
Actually, polio was a middle-class disease, particularly in its last
few years of activity. When infants get it, they usually run a fever
for a couple of days and have no other lasting paralysis. When older
children or adults get it, they get really sick and are frequently
paralyzed. (My husband was nine when he got it and he was incredibly
ill and has major paralysis.)
The explanation of the prevalence of the disease in the middle class
was explained to my husband (or to his family) in the 1950's. The
children of the poor tended to contract the disease when they were
very young, as did the children of the rich, who had nurses and
servants from the poorer classes. Because of this, the disease was
essentially invisible in these two classes. The middle class
children, on the other hand, got the disease much later in their lives
and suffered much more visibly. Too much sanitation when they were
babies, supposedly.
I'm old enough to remember the swimming pools closing in August, when
the risk was high. Every grade school class seemed to have a kid with
a leg brace or a useless arm, too. It was a real scourge.
--
Mary Shafer DoD #362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
sha...@ferhino.dfrf.nasa.gov Of course I don't speak for NASA
"A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all." Unknown US fighter pilot