Show rk G oriental scholar improves nutritive value of rice by news analyst and commentator Comment wor service 1616 eye street NW W washington sh ington D C washington do you know that an invention ot of a young per elan am american may rid the orient of its greatest curse malnutrition do yo you know how it happened that s some ome of 0 the most beautiful classics 0 middle iddle ea eastern 1 tern literature e come came to be w written itten in a lan ian agn gauge uge aramaic a once ce the vulgar patois of the people the same man answered both t those iose questions I 1 for 0 me and nd its q quite u I 1 t e possible ti that I 1 at had he not b been een able to answer sw e r both he wo would u ld h edve a ve been baukhage Bauk liage able to answer either it was the inventor himself M yonan malek malck who enlightened me in two and a halt hours ot of the most charming and informative conversation in which I 1 have indulged in many a strike darkened politics clouded washington afternoon briefly he has invented a process which keeps the nutritive ti ve value of rice in the kernel boosts the rice yield by 25 per cent cheats rice eating beetles and weevils out of their annual million dollar banquet but probably most important of all leaves the vitamin B factors in each grain of rice intact since the rice eating countries account for or half the worlds population and since malnutrition Is a serious problem in all of them the invention seems a little less than revolutionary in its potentialities it is already the basis of a going r rrean rr cern ern polish vitamins out of product my acquaintance with rice his has blen bl en a nodding one furthered b by y 13 periodic visits to chinese r rants ants when I 1 ate the underpinning of the celery sprouts and a strips strip of nf chicken I 1 realize that the ancient pharaohs Phara of egypt would ba have approved its polished while ness s I 1 realize that that polished pis ish whiteness had been achieved by 19 dia different ent cleaning milling and polishing e ra tl ons ld and I 1 certainly guess ess that those 19 operations erat ions had r bed my rice of 76 per cent of its thi ine 56 per cent of its riboflavin an 63 per cent of its nia cin and f its food value v white rice it s seems ik ia a fetish that goes ba back C it i to 0 the vf t the h e pharaohs Phara when ahen white was bol of royalty some unnamed c diet ef with a deep sense of the fitness 0 oa things like the idea of his pharaoh partaking of crude pie blan bian looking rice so he ordered the royal millers to polish the grain to a pearly whiteness the millers complied never realizing they were polishing the food value out of the food the poor people of 0 egypt went on eating their rough unpolished rice and nobody guessed why they were healthier than their rulers this situation lasted until the french revolution when the revolutionaries insisted on their right to keep up with the royal joneses they wanted polished white rice too and white bread they got it and have been getting it ever since the custom has persisted until today when hen we still require our rice millers to strip away more than half the vitamins from our r rice ice ard wheat this Is not so important in potato and bread conscious america but in oriental countries where frequently qu L antly the word rice an and d food are synonymous its something else again six hundred thirty million orientals orient als derive more than 40 per cent of their food calories from rice and it if the rice Is polished they are losing vital nutritional values at every meal malek became rice conscious back in 1938 when one of his friends friend s wished aloud that he could figure out some way to increase rice consumption in the united states at that time tons of rice were rotting in the california rice fields for want of a market each season this count coun tryg rys rice growers were being left with a surplus of at least three million bags of rice the industry was slowly going broke malek went at the problem in the approved american tradition lie he polled representative california housewives to find out why they ser serving vi g more nicest rice at theli their dinner tables he learned that they were tired of burned pots and pans I 1 and sticky gummy rice 11 II if we wa could only buy canned rice ready to heat and serve they would sigh I 1 malek tried to oblige for several months he cooked rice and canned rice in ills his own home in industrial kitchens in government laboratories but the rice invariably ably looked and tasted like flour paste I 1 long memory aids research one day however he tried cooking and canning the patna batna variety of rice from india the results were som somewhat c what more encouraging the canne canned d kernels seemed less gelatinous almost fluffy then he remembered I 1 a something om ething hed read about the natives of 0 assam it seemed these n natives suffered less I 1 from rom beri bert berl than did natives of 0 other oriental regions malek took to the research books and discovered that the parboiled their rice that Is they soaked it for days in water to loosen the tough hulls then they steamed it up to that point malek had been trying to can polished white rice rice whose vitamin filled bran layers had been cleaned hulled milled scoured and polished away this was the first mention of the treatment of rough paddy rice before it was milled ile he leaped on it as a possible clue lie he managed to get from a friend a bag of rough paddy rice prepaid fortunately tor for by this time malek was walking tto and from his expert experimental laboratory unable to afford even a car token he soaked the rice tor for days when he needed to parboil the rice in steam he found an unused sterilizer at a nearby hospital where the in ternes were glad to help him even his neighbors in his apartment building were on hand to help him spread the parboiled rice on ion the roof rauf to dr dry now he had his precious parboiled paddy rice but the tough hulls on the kernels posed a problem an ordinary rice mill handles rough rice in carload lots the only way for malek to mill a hundred pounds was to find a hand mill well he found a hand mill and ground the hulls from the rice the rice was canned and this time the kernels that rolled out were hard dark chocolate colored and separate at that time malek know he had accidentally driven the wa ter soluble bran layers into the rice kernel itself lie he only knew this rice was distinctly different than any hs he had bad canned before what he had to do then was to determine the length of time to soak the rice what temperature to use under what steam pressure to parboil bb it it took malek months work ing ingrith ingy avith ith makeshift equipment to hit uina the right formula finally he obtained rice which when canned cand came out fluffy with each grain gra separate and perfectly tender the ile layers of bran driven drive ii into the kernel imparted a different nutlike nut like bran flavor and the long cooking cookin g at high lempera temperature ture had made th the e rice sterile stelle but the best part of all which he discovered through scientific analysis was the fact that this new rice was unbelievably rich in vitamins the army and ana navy were interested and malek offered them his patents tor for the wars duration at the present time hes busy licensing rice m mills ills here and abroad to use his process about the only thing he has left to worry about now Is how to obtain the rice in order to process it the rice supply as any grocery haunting house housewife ife w will III know Is not what it used to be the world supply of rice Is short this year and a large li percentage of rice raised in the united states has been allocated to co countries where rice Is a staple stapie food this scarcity explains wily why rice along with sugar and syrup Is the only food still remaining rna ining under price control but once the war world supply pi 1 increases therell be more rice more nutritious rice more flavorful rice furthermore malek guarantees that the brand new bride wont have to make any last minute switches in the dinner menu because the rice she cooked turned out all wrong ohl what about the aramaic classics I 1 do justice to that one not without a little more space and a lot more help from malek |