Improving health through agriculture-diet interfacing-New approach

Most ideal way to produce food is to shun the use of chemicals and other man-made inputs to boost production. Also selecting right variety for planting for crops with highest nutrient content is a desirable goal. It is true that evolution of food processing has seen progressive dilution of nutrition because significant part of the nutrients are removed as waste in order to improve functionality of raw material for various operations and also to improve the aesthetic quality to attract consumers. Plant breeder during olden days attempted to select plants with high nutrient denssity and diversity and cross breed them to improve the overall quality of these crops. Modern biotechnology has found newer techniques for genetic modification that can be done much faster compared to the old hybridization technology. Unfortunately modern day plant breeders using GMO technology have not been able to convince the consumers that they are absolutely safe. Look at the messy food landscape in the US where GMO foods have taken a vice like grip on the market and relentless fight back by the consumers going on to force the manufacturers to declare GMO foods on the front of the package label. A recent report from Africa claims that new sweet potato varieties with orange color in stead of white or yellow, can bring about dramatic improvements in the health status of the local population. Read further below to understand the implications of this development. 

"Farmers in Mozambique had been planting white and yellow sweet potatoes, not the orange-colored ones. The white and yellow potatoes have very little Vitamin A. However, one small, orange sweet potato has a fullday's supply of Vitamin A. A lack of Vitamin A is dangerous. Without enough Vitamin A, you face an increased risk of getting a serious disease or dying from infections.
Around the world, 190 million young children are not getting enough of this important vitamin in the foods they eat. That number comes from the spokesman of WorldHealth Organization. He saysabout 70 percent of children there were Vitamin A deficient. They were not getting enough Vitamin A. "About 70 percent of kids under the age of five were vitamin A deficient. So,you have this huge need for new solutions. If you can do something throughagriculture to increase the amount of vitamin in the diet … you're in muchbetter shape because that's much more sustainable.". Mr. de Brauw says the potatoes had a surprising effect on the health ofchildren. At the end of the three-year study, the researchers compared the health of children in villages growing orange sweet potatoes with those not growing them. Children living in the sweet potato villages had 40 percent fewer cases ofdiarrhea than other boys and girls. Among children under the age of three, the difference was 50 percent. According to Mr. de Brauw showing the impact of a food-growing project on health is very important, or as he says, a big deal.Health specialists say lack of vitamin A can cause blindness in children (Photo Courtesy - Light for the World)
"This is a big deal because nobody has shown in thepast that an agricultural production intervention can have big health impacts … have had any healthimpacts."Nutrition experts say vitamin supplements – that is,fluids or pills you take in addition to normal meals -- canonly do so much. One expert goes so far to say that supplements are a Band-aid -- a short-term fix to along-term problem. Anne Herforth is an expert on global food security andnutrition. She was not part of this study but talked about it with VOA's SteveBaragona on Skype."It's sort of a Band-Aid solution to a more fundamental problem, which is people not having access to high-quality diets."Experts are suggesting that linking agriculture and health issues is a natural and effective partnership.They say teaching farmers how to grow healthier food is among the best ways to improve health.Different types of millet are helping feed people in India, Africa and other parts of the world..Ms. Herfoth says the findings do a good job making the link between food production and health. "To say, 'You know, look, you produce a food and it'savailable to people to eat and they like it,' then it does good things for health."HarvestPlus is now helping farmers in other countries. In India, the group is helping farmers grow iron-richmillet. And in Bangladesh, it is helping farmers grow high-zinc rice."

No doubt the intention of the developers of orange variety of sweet potato must be noble but what is not revealed is how such new varieties have been evolved by the scientists achieving this breakthrough. According to the developers this variety has been evolved using traditional techniques which means that there is no gene level manipulation to get this special trait. Also of some doubt is whether the so called bio-fortified produce has carotenoids which are readily assimilated by the body as not much has been done on this aspect. But some trials seem to indicate that those fed on this variety were "healthier" than others with better vision and other biological functions. Similar efforts in Asia to evolve varieties of crops enriched with iron and zinc also are also going on though it may take some time before stable versions are developed. A big question that haunts policy makers is how to convince the farmers to switch over to the new varieties from their traditional ones to which they are used to for decades. Probably the farmers can understand only the language of "crop yield" which is linked to more profits and higher incomes. Nutritional superiority is rarely a USP for farmers world over. Unless the new varieties with better nutrition can compete economically with traditional crops, promoting them will be an arduous task.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE GOLDEN RICE ENIGMA!-WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Can GM foods solve world hunger? This is a question posed by many people concerned with the possibility of mass starvation in a few years to come because of inadequate food production to feed the ever growing population all over the world. No doubt GM foods have some advantages when it comes to preventing food losses through better strains of plants with built-in pest resistance but whether saving of food through such intervention is adequate to augment the food supply is questionable. In one of the well publicized achievement by the private GM food developers while creating the so called Golden Rice, it is claimed ( or bragged) that mass cultivation of this version of rice would prevent vision loss in poor countries due to inadequate intake of vitamin A in daily diets. Can any one take this claim seriously if the following commentary truly reflects the ground reality vis-a-vis cultivation of Golden Rice?

"For one thing, we've learned that golden rice will not grow in the kinds of soil that it must to be of value to the world's hungry. To grow properly, it requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides -- expensive inputs unaffordable to the very people that the variety is supposed to help. And we've also learned that golden rice requires large amounts of water -- water that might not be available in precisely those areas where Vitamin A deficiency is a problem, and where farmers cannot afford costly irrigation projects. And one more thing -- it turns out that golden rice doesn't work, even in theory. Malnourished people are not able to absorb Vitamin A in this form. And even if they could, they'd have to eat an awful lot of the stuff. An 11-year-old boy would have to eat 27 bowls of golden rice a day in order to satisfy his minimum requirement for the vitamin".

Is it not criminal to claim that Golden Rice would solve the wide scale prevalence of blindness due to vitamin deficiency in many developing countries while such assertions fly in the face of truth? The multi billion dollar GM food industry is built on a science that is not sound enough but it has been able to brow beat one country in this Universe, viz the US to permit GM versions of crops and ingredients in processed foods with no mandatory "front of the pack"labeling requirement. In contrast most countries raise very inconvenient questions regarding long term safety of such foods and the environmental impact posed by large scale cultivation of GM crops. World must unite to fight this aggressive trait on the part of "profit at any cost" GM lobby to prevent a catastrophe of Himalayan proportion waiting to happen!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

GOLDEN "RICE"-A NUTRITIONAL BOGEY?

Every scientific endeavor is subjected to stringent scrutiny regarding its relevance and safety to the people it is supposed to serve and therefore the controversy surrounding the vitamin enrichment of rice through genetic technology under the project "Golden Rice" is also to be expected. There are two aspects on which one needs to be critical. First whether the new technology is really going to solve the problem of vitamin A deficiency. Then comes the question of safety of the new version of the product. Unless industry is able to satisfy the critics on the above issues, it is unlikely that such new technologies become universally acceptable.

"The problem is that vitamin A rice will not remove vitamin A deficiency (VAD). It will seriously aggravate it. It is a technology that fails in its promise. Since the daily average requirement of vitamin A is 750 micrograms of vitamin A and 1 serving contains 30g of rice according to dry weight basis, vitamin A rice would only provide 9.9 micrograms which is 1.32% of the required allowance. Even taking the 100g figure of daily consumption of rice used in the technology transfer paper would only provide 4.4% of the RDA."

It is debatable whether rice is really a worthy candidate for vitamin enrichment and the fact that huge quantities are needed even to meet even 10% of RDA needs to be kept in mind. Vitamin A is stored in the body for a long time and once a year Vitamin A shots are being administered in many countries to combat its deficiency. Past experience has shown that there are much better delivery media for carrying Vitamin A such as milk, cooking fats, etc and efficient fortification technologies are available to day to ensure uniform dispersion of the nutrient in the carrier. The allegation that golden rice causes some side effects needs to be fully investigated before attempting at commercialization by the industry.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com