Rice study - Take it with a grain of salt

A sensational study released last month in the United Kingdom has left people scratching their heads for answers (and poking fun at the researcher).

Andy Meharg, professor of plant and soil sciences at Queen's University Belfast, claimed that traditional ways of cooking rice leave traces of the poison arsenic, exposing consumers to a range of illnesses.

Meharg is exaggerating, grossly.

Rice is the staple food of most Asian countries, including China, and any suggestion that half the world is cooking its favorite food the wrong way is preposterous.

No wonder, Meharg's claim has drawn wide ridicule in the British media.

"It takes a potato-eating person to teach billions of people how to cook their rice," wrote "Solo56", a reader from Manchester, in the Daily Mail.

Another, from Shanghai, identified as "Toxents", asked whether the researcher had ever been to a rice paddy.

"I'm Chinese, and this is utter rubbish," wrote "Arnie 0011" in The Independent.

Japan, where rice is the main food, has the highest life expectancy in the world. The Japanese are not cooking rice the way Meharg suggested in his study.

And, yeah, it is projected that women in rice-eating South Korea will live the longest by 2030.

In the world of scientific research, it's become common practice for someone to publish a study with outlandish claims, only to be discredited later.

There is a legion of such debunked studies.

For example, take cholesterol research. For more than half a century, we have been told that cholesterol-rich foods such as eggs, butter, meat and coconut oil are bad for us.

But in late 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services made a dramatic U-turn when it issued The Dietary Guidelines for Americans for the next five years.

"Cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption," it said, delighting foodies around the world.

Now, let's take a look at Meharg's "safe" method of cooking rice.

"The safest method of cooking rice is therefore to soak it overnight, then wash and rinse it until the water is clear, before draining it well and boiling in a saucepan, with a ratio of five parts water to one part rice," Queen's University said in its press release announcing the "breakthrough".

What is he trying to make? Pudding?

If you wash and drain rice multiple times, all the nutrients will be gone anyway.

Also, heard of conjee? That is rice gruel. It is considered very nutritious, and people all over Asia have been drinking different types of conjee for generations without any health problems.

It looks like the main purpose of the Queen's study is to promote a rice cooker it is developing.

"Queen's is at the patent stage for the development of a bespoke rice cooker based on a percolation system, which means consumers could soon have this technology in their own kitchen," the announcement said.

One thing is certain - Meharg's cooker will be dead on arrival in Asia!

Contact the writer at abdul@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/02/2017 page2)