Iron-fortified Rice: Not for My Children
Iron-fortified rice is in the news. Allegedly to help children overcome iron deficiency. Since in the studies “they” made where they got anemic students, they gave them rice + meat and made sure that the meat was of LOW IRON content for 5 days a week for several weeks. Some with plain NFA rice. Some with NFA rice plus FeSo4 and some rice with FeP80. Lo and behold with blood tests later they declare that the children who had rice that was supplemented / coated with FeSo4 and FeP80 had higher iron content in their blood. And this “study” gives “them” the green light to promote the contamination, the pollution, the mixing of rice with chemical “iron” FeSo4 and FeP80 coated rice sold at “low prices” to the masses of people.
What an ugly study. Do parents intentionally give low iron meat / “ulam” to their children at ALL meals?
Foods high in organic iron / human compatible iron are easy to acquire and cheap.
Mollusks and clams are staple foods and should be staple foods several times a week. Clams / halaan have the highest B12 content. You can eat them raw. You can lightly boil them in a pot until they open and then stop the fire. They taste great by themselves. They are highly nutritious and they are cheap.
Grass fed beef liver and grass fed goat liver are staple foods and should be eaten once a week. A few slices is all it takes. Pan seared served with onions is a staple common dish. Do not overcook as the liver will taste bad… and only when it is overcooked does liver taste bad… overcooking is a mortal sin most Filipinos do to meat… idiocy.
Real fertilized eggs. We get duck eggs. They are called “special”. We get them at the raw live balut traders in the wet market. Eaten raw, sunny side up or boiled. Delicious.
Kamote tops is another easy, common and cheap source of iron. You can just put it on top of steaming hot rice and it softens enough to eat, or dip in soup. For maximum effect, that is medicinal enough to cure dengue fever, merely pound a few raw kamote tops for juice and add some water. Drink a glass full. Iron to the max.
Then there is the food staple called RED MEAT. It is RED because of iron? Of blood? Sear it a little only. And has anybody heard of dinuguan? Lots of cooked iron there in dinuguan… right?
THINK! Do you actually want some anonymous company polluting your RICE? Have you ever heard that it is important that your staple RICE be PURE? The PURITY OF RICE, your staple food is at stake!
Isn’t the original intent of eating rice is it has to be as pure as possible? You plant the rice in your plot of land. You harvest it as palay. The palay you bring to a rice milling machine or you pound it yourself. This is now “bigas” which you cook into rice / “kanin”.
But NOOOOOO…. nowadays… all that various palay from different plots, from different countries, with different qualities and inferiorities are milled in the big wholesale rice wholesaler places in Bulacan and MIXED into different commercial “brands” with chemical FRAGRANCES added… oh a rice insider told me this.
I once brought home PURE rice. A single variety. 160. Fed the kids. Did not tell them anything. I got home and 3 children were just so passionately ecstatic about the NEW RICE I never once told them about. They tasted the difference IMMEDIATELY. The taste of PURE rice as originally intended by our ancestors is something to be passionate about. This is why they labored over pure rice so much more than they do over easy to plant kamote.
I wonder who profits in this new rice polluting scheme? Who supplies chemical / inorganic “iron” FeSo4 and FeP80? What I do know about reports of regular chemical / inorganic “iron” supplements is that it can cause extreme constipation. So who will be selling a lot of laxatives in the future? How many children and adults will be constipated? No one knows.
Iron-fortified rice… another pollutant to be wary about when eating out. Going to be sold “cheap” in the markets. Expect the turo turo to be lapping it up for profits. Pure rice I get direct from Nueva Ecija costs me 40 pesos per kilo for binhi 160 plus my car transport costs. How do you expect that iron-fortified rice can cost so much lower? MAYBE they use lower quality binhi, or old palay, or imported low cost rice or whatever combination they can get… make your best guesses.
You do what you want with your kids. And I will do what I want with my kids. I will get pure rice for my kids… organic pure rice is best… and give them high organic iron content real animal and vegetable food.
I say no to iron-fortified rice for my children.