The solution for any nutritional deficiencies is not the "fortification" of the staple foods.
I believe that the future of food sources is in genetically-engineered organisms, but I am dismayed by the fact that all the current attempts of genetic modifications have stupid goals.
The "fortification" of staple foods is extremely stupid, because the amount of staple food that is consumed varies widely with sex, size, age and physical activity and it is not proportional to the daily requirements for various vitamins or minerals. The amount of vitamins ingested from "fortified" food is always either insufficient or wasted as excessive.
The staple foods are required to provide only proteins and/or fats and/or carbohydrates. For everything else there are specific sources that are needed only in small quantities, so they usually do not add up to a major part of the cost of the food.
The daily intake of vitamin A can be obtained for instance from 100 grams of carrots, which in Europe, where I live, cost much less than 10 cents, so they can be afforded by anyone. In other parts of the world, where carrots are less common, there are various vegetables with similar properties, e.g. sweet potatoes and many others.
If they have vitamin A deficiency in their population, the solution is not buying more expensive yellow rice, but teaching everyone which is the amount of the cheapest locally available vegetable that is a suitable source of beta-carotene, which must be eaten daily.
You are philosophically correct but the flaw with this argument is time and $$$. With each passing year millions of people around the world die or go blind from vitamin A deficiency. Most of these cases are due to an over-reliance on white rice in particular, making golden rice essentially a drop-in solution for much of the world’s poorest. The goal is (or should be) to stop the bleeding with golden rice while also investing in and providing education around more diverse agricultural production.
They're not just philosophically correct but probably correct in practice as well. Golden rice - especially the original version of it - is not just an easy drop-in solution. It requires the development of specific variants suited to the climate where it's grown, the original version didn't supply enough vitamin A even in an ideal scenario and had pretty major yield reductions which made the rice more expensive (which is a huge problem when poverty is one of the major reasons people are so dependentt on rice in the first place), and this was compounded by licensing restrictions which blocked both cross-border sales and most growing in countries which were self sufficient for food production.
Those licenses made it effectively unavailable both to most countries which imported their rice and most countries that were self-sufficient. I think the two countries that had early trials may well have been the only two that were both eligible to make use of it and able to do so, and in at least one case that was a result of an error which resulted in them being counted as eligible when they weren't. They mostly seem to have been a PR stunt, something big biotech could point to and claim that they'd given the world a free solution to vitamin A deficiency that was being blocked by evil anti-GMO campaigners that wanted kids to go blind.
It should be obvious that golden rice must be more expensive than traditional rice, otherwise it would not be promoted by whichever company has invented it.
Therefore it would take $$$ from the pockets "of the world’s poorest" to the pockets of that company.
Correct education is the "drop-in solution" for the poor, not convincing them to buy a more expensive "IP-protected" product, so that their lives will become dependent of the new exclusive supplier.
Golden rice want IP protected - it was part of the deal that targeted use was not too be encumbered.
The biggest "IP protections" on golden rice came from... Greenpeace and other anti-GMO activists - who wanted prevention against "accidental contamination" of non-gmo with gmo.
"Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots."
People will do what people do. Better operate within that than to change people.
People do not need to "live" on carrots or whatever other sources of vitamins are needed. These are needed only in small quantities in comparison with the main food. Carrots need not be eaten raw. They should be boiled either in a soup or with the rice. In many places carrots are a normal addition to rice, to make it tastier, regardless of any vitamin benefits.
I have given the example of a natural source, which should be the cheapest in most places, but even taking a vitamin A capsule per day must be cheaper than replacing white rice with yellow rice and it is guaranteed to provide the right amount of vitamin, unlike eating yellow rice and it also avoids the dependency of a monopolistic supplier.
Unlike for a genetically-modified crop, for vitamin capsules or tablets or powders there are many suppliers in various countries and for most of them the prices have become much cheaper than for the equivalent amount of fresh vegetables or fruits.
You're taking this extremely literally. My point, and the point of Orwell's quote up there, is that people eat what they enjoy, not what's nutritionally best. Poor Asian countries nigh-on venerate rice as the staple crop, and can grow vast amounts of it locally. So working within that does incredible work very easily.
I understand what you are saying but the missing piece is a willing and able population.
I don’t know the data so I am making guesses but perhaps the population impacted the most is not the middle class living in more metro areas but the rest of the population. I am reminded about the iron deficiency in Malaysia maybe? They introduced cast iron casted into good luck shapes for the population to use during cooking.
a problem that is easily solved with education. the money invested in this rice could easily instead be spent on educational campaigns to influence peoples eating habits. and i don't mean advertising but actually going door to door and talking to everyone. repeatedly, and getting everyone involved along the way. people learn to improve their hygiene to avoid spreading diseases, they can also learn to eat better.
i'd like to see evidence that teaching people failed before i believe that this is not working.
You’re assuming people have the money and availability to do this. It’s easy to say that this is easily solved with education but that’s probably a pretty entitled opinion.
Habit and tradition are hard to break. Along with that going back to my original point, it could be that a significant part of the population does not have the money or access. Lots of people have access to rice as their sole staple food when no money is available.
Edit: I am not as close to the Philippines but have lots of friends that emigrated and my understand is that there is a significant part of the population that are still living very poor. Also leaning on my life in Vietnam for comp of rural poor living in a growing country.
as others have argued, you do not need to replace the rice with equal amounts of more expensive vegetables. but you replace a small amount of rice with vegetables for the same value as you can afford it. of course it also helps if there is more support for growing the vegetables.
i am in a developing country now. what i have observed is that people here eat more than twice as much rice or other staple food in a meal than i do myself. i suspect that this is to make up for the lack of nutrients they could otherwise get from eating more vegetables.
I believe that the future of food sources is in genetically-engineered organisms, but I am dismayed by the fact that all the current attempts of genetic modifications have stupid goals.
The "fortification" of staple foods is extremely stupid, because the amount of staple food that is consumed varies widely with sex, size, age and physical activity and it is not proportional to the daily requirements for various vitamins or minerals. The amount of vitamins ingested from "fortified" food is always either insufficient or wasted as excessive.
The staple foods are required to provide only proteins and/or fats and/or carbohydrates. For everything else there are specific sources that are needed only in small quantities, so they usually do not add up to a major part of the cost of the food.
The daily intake of vitamin A can be obtained for instance from 100 grams of carrots, which in Europe, where I live, cost much less than 10 cents, so they can be afforded by anyone. In other parts of the world, where carrots are less common, there are various vegetables with similar properties, e.g. sweet potatoes and many others.
If they have vitamin A deficiency in their population, the solution is not buying more expensive yellow rice, but teaching everyone which is the amount of the cheapest locally available vegetable that is a suitable source of beta-carotene, which must be eaten daily.