By Harvey W. Wiley, M. D.

RICE is a cereal which is rarely, if ever, used in bread making. It is, however, an important article of diet, consisting largely of starch, and furnishing an abundant source of heat and energy. In order to secure the best, nutritional rice, only unpolished kernels should be used. These, however, are not found very generally on the market because our people seem to have a passion, in cereals at least, for that which is pure white. Rice is often adulterated, that is, it is coated with glucose, talc, paraffin, etc. The purpose of treating rice in this way is to make it look better and thus appeal to the eye of the purchaser and consumer. In doing this, however, it loses often its right to appeal to the nutrition of the consumer. The average content of protein in polished rice is about seven per cent. while the protein of wheat is 12.25 per cent. On the other hand, rice has nearly eighty per cent. of starch, while wheat has a little over seventy per cent. Rice, therefore, is not to be regarded as the equal of the ordinary cereals, as a builder of protein tissues, but it is superior to them in its power to furnish heat and energy, hence a diet of rice for a hard working man is ideal, because of the amount of heat required to furnish the energy for the labor. People of sedentary habits should be careful, however, not to eat too much rice.

The unpolished rice contains about eight per cent. of protein, and more than twice as much fat and mineral ingredients as the unpolished kernels. Recent investigations indicate that vitamins, constituents which are of the greatest importance, are also lost when the outer coating of the rice is removed, and the absence of these and the other ingredients lost in polishing doubtless accounts for the occurrence of beri-beri among people living exclusively on polished rice, thus indicating the value of the materials removed, though the results, of course, are not so dire when rice forms only a part of the menu. Such facts are of great importance, however, in indicating the dangers and losses arising from the manipulation of natural foods and their over-refinement.