Polished rice vs Unpolished rice

Unpolished Brown rice....What’s the difference....?

Polished and unpolished rice do obviously differ in color, appearance and aroma. The way paddy is processed (Milling) to get rice is the primary differentiation. A paddy grain has 7 layers; Milling and polishing removes up to 5 outermost layers of a rice grain, leaving only a core comprised mostly of carbohydrates. The outermost ‘Bran layer’ after ‘husk/hull layer’ contains essential fatty acids and very important nutrient such as thiamine, an important component in mother’s milk. These nutrient rich outer layers have numerous good fats and fibers that help to maintain intestinal health, prevent cancer, fight obesity, and affect the probability of getting both heart disease and diabetes. Polished rice doesn't have any of these health benefits.

Rice husk and Rice Bran are the usual leftover by-products of milling and polishing. Powdered husk is a nutrient rich food for cattle. And those Bran layers are being used to manufacture rice bran oil J.

Each unpolished brown rice grain has more than a polished white rice grain....

·         80% more vitamin B1

·         67% more vitamin B3

·         90% more vitamin B6

·         50% more Iron

·         50% more Manganese

·         50% more Phosphorus

·         Fiber, Antioxidants and healthy fats

The practice of polishing rice had its origin in the desire to improve its keeping quality, and the incidental whitening of the seeds, nuts and grains led to the demand for white products. The aesthetic sense is appealed to in greatest measure in this case by the products of lowest biologic values.

Our journey from Harvest to Market.....

This is our very first experience with milling rice...may be many farmers went through this same journey. It took us more than three months from paddy harvest to process rice, after all intense care to farm a poison free food grain; we were adamant about processing rice to be a whole grain without losing any health benefits of it. We started experimenting with local rice mills and hand-pounding.

Rice mills around our field didn't have the capability and awareness to perform only de-husking. One of the initial stages of rice milling is to pass paddy through sets of cylindrical steel rollers for de-husking, Instead of de-husking only the outer hull of paddy these steel rollers tend to remove the nutrient rich bran layers. We also learnt that rubber rollers in place of steel rollers help retain nutrient rich layers with rice grain. Mills which used rubber rollers instead of steel rollers are mostly of automated plants and you can’t break stages of processing. You feed in the paddy and get only polished rice as output.

On the other hand only a very few elderly known hand-pounding, its logistics, and people didn't work out to be fruitful. Our search ended with a distant location where we could just pass the paddy only through a set of rubber rollers and there was an option to break the process and get output at different stages; but the trick is rubber rollers are equipped to de-husk only 20% of the fed paddy, so there is a need to re-route the output through these rollers again and again, but with repetition; rice grain will start to break off. The real challenge is to balance this, and we will still be left with at least 10% of unprocessed paddy mixed with rice and an additional step to separate them out. We did gladly succeed with a steep learning curve and now we have our rice packed and ready to be sold direct to consumers.

facebook.com/agam.organicfarm

Check out Give Earth a hand | Greenpeace International

Check out Give Earth a hand | Greenpeace International

1, 2, chromium 3 and 4

This is like the story of good old movies. A good and a bad guy from the same family; The Chromium family, their compounds are good and bad. Where are they in our lives? Their existence and use dates back to about 2000 years of human civilization.

Chromium is a naturally occurring element. Out of all their compounds, the commonly occurring valence states are chromium metal Cr (0), trivalent chromium Cr (III) and hexavalent chromium Cr (IV). We need to dig out about 4 kg of chromium ore from earth to realize 1 kg usable chromium.

We use chromium compounds to fight corrosion, as tanning salts in leather industries and others, as an important constituent in metal alloys (metal alloys alone account for 85% of chromium usage), in wood preservation, cement manufacturing.
Abundantly used in today’s surface coating applications incl. chrome plating, paint and pigment applications (the brilliant yellow paint has to be made from high concentrations of chromium compounds) and in few anodizing process.
They were an essential compound in those infamous magnetic recording tapes and photography films: Progressive new technologies at least replaced these tapes and films with new mass storage devices and image sensors.
So, what is so special about these chemical compounds?

Hexavalent Chromium Cr (IV), a class I carcinogen, is one of the most celebrated chemical in recent times. Thanks to the sustainable status shift companies are aiming at. Even the ‘Erin Brokovich’ movie plot was built on Cr (IV) health effects based on a true story, where an industry’s waste water with high concentrations of Cr (IV) percolates in to ground water and lead to acute sufferings of people in and around that locality. In 1996, this company paid $333 million to the people living around its setup in a law suit.

Cr (IV) is readily reactive and soluble in water. It is still an essential alloy constituent in stainless steel and is/was used widely by those hundreds of leather tanneries of Kanpur and Vaniyambaadi in India (legally as well as illegally). People obviously love that shiny/silver finish of chrome plated products/parts. But researches say that their compounds are genotoxic even in small traces, exposure and inhalation can easily cause lung cancer and damages in kidneys and intestine. Occupational hazard is indefinitely high; certain leather tanneries no more employ young people and women, but still employ people.

Well, controversially, trivalent chromium Cr (III) is an essential mineral for human metabolism, a trace amount of it is necessary for maintenance of good health since it helps our body to utilize sugar, fat and protein. Cr (III) sounds necessary, isn’t it? Even then in many literatures, it is carefully denoted as ‘less toxic’ (than Cr (IV)), but not as ‘safe’ entirely. Continual exposure can lead to mentionable health effects and allergic situations.
Most of the literatures and research reports on Cr (III) never seem to take a firm stand on any side of good or bad affects and effects of it, hence concluded ‘less bad’ usually.

There are nearly about 20 different chromium compounds which have to be restricted / stopped in use. The new revised Hazardous waste act, 2008 enforced by Ministry of Environment and Forests, India limits hexavalent chromium only up to 50mg/kg in regulation. There are other better benchmarks which recommend complete avoidance of Cr (IV) usage until and unless it is highly necessary for technical performance in some cases, but it is essential to keep such products in closed loop of manufacture, use and recovery.
New environment regulations and measures led many to adopt Cr (III) as an effective alternative to Cr (IV) at least in surface coating applications (chrome plating etc).

# There are researches on, to discover possible absorption and removal of Cr (IV) through bacteria and other micro-organisms.
# EU norms (2006) prohibit marketing of new electrical and electronic equipments containing Cr (IV) at a concentration greater than 0.1% by weight.
# Arc welding of stainless steel is extremely dangerous.
# Trivalent chromium compounds are bluish-black.
# Hexavalent chromium compounds are yellow-orange-brown.

It is difficult to get convinced on this whole chromium chronology, all depends on its oxidation state and acidity around, chromium compounds can change from trivalent to hexavalent and vice-versa through various reactions and consequences in the environment and inside human/animal body. We still have to settle for one Cr (III) which is less toxic and obviously not 100% safe.

Paper, Plastic and People

When it comes to packaging, it is always this mind-boggling question “Paper or Plastic?” A hazy debate till date; consuming the common consumer, I started with asking friends and people. “Paper or Plastic”, why(s) and why not(s).

Upshots
90% ended up choosing paper.
Paper is readily biodegradable compared to plastic.
Plastic is harmful in some or other way to humans and environment.
95% of them never carried their own shopping bags in recent years.
70% reused their plastic bags though in rare instances.
98% of them look up to shops/retails to provide them with a positive alternative for existing bags.
Immediate alternative to plastic packaging/bags is only paper in their minds.
People are skeptical about durability of paper bags.
People like to reuse those plastic bags of cult and respected/popular brands.

In reality...

Paper can’t be a sustainable material, just because of its natural raw material and bio-degradability. We do a lot of deforestation to source its raw material; it is an unfair human play towards nature to use trees and plants as a source for an ephemeral substance like paper.
Then we bleach the extracted pulps and fibers from cut trees using chlorine gas; in turn those industrial effluents (we have 12,000 paper mills across the world, approx) will introduce chlorine dioxins in to our food chain.

In fact, we will need more energy for transshipment of paper bags compared to plastic ones. With all these pamper to encourage paper usage might exert a back pressure in the system increasing the demand for paper, which will call for more energy, more fuel and more cut trees.

The bio-degradability part; we ink them, print them with heavy metals and composite them with plastics, metals and what not, do we expect these other add-on elements to break down in to our environment along with paper when it is thrown away.

Then we have this recycled eco-friendly paper trying to save energy and natural resources, It is been said that, recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees approximately and every virgin wood pulp can be made and re-made to live as paper for 5 to 7 life cycles.
Though, only one-fourth of post consumer paper recycling happens across. The whole process ends up consuming more fuel and energy compared to plastic recycling. It also calls for strong chemical surfactants for de-inking and chlorine agents to bleach, releasing more harmful effluents in to environment. Efficient methods of paper recycling are either evolving or yet to evolve. Paper packaging alone accounts for 15% to 20% of yearly land fill.

Well, Plastics! facts and figures apart, the word plastic means ‘able to be molded’, true! They are molded in to every moment of our life. We see them littered everywhere around us, no doubts these inorganic creations and synthetic chemicals can be an effective technical nutrient to feed the industry with waste as food. We have enough of them as waste.

Plastics don’t get created by compromising sensitive natural inhabitants like trees and plants, at least till the time we switch over to bioplastics. We only need crude oil, which may be available for at least another half century or end of life plastics to give birth to new ones. Rather they have long and longer life cycles enough to persist in this environment even after human life cycles. They are already in our food chain; our hormones have become smart enough to converse with the inorganic chemical molecules. Not to mention birds, animals and water life, they don’t have any rights to spoil earth as we humans do.

Come on consumers! Pause and give a thought; we no more have the luxury of throwing away things. It is plastic or paper; we can’t just throw away anymore, there is no more an ‘away’. The problem is not only with paper or plastic, it is with the people.

There is this infamous concept of ‘3Rs -Reuse, Reduce, Recycle’. Actually, this concept doesn’t fit many sustainability frameworks. Let us forget the choice between ‘paper and plastic’ for a moment. Avoid this choice altogether. Use paper bags or plastic bags; but reuse them, allow their enduring life. One has to figure out instances of use (paper/plastic/others), alternative plastic bags or cloth bags can be of better choices. Diligent reuse will automatically reduce consumption. These concepts of reuse and reduce are not really new to us, observe your grand parents attitude towards consumption.

Think before asking for another plastic bag!

Daily Defies

Designers!, often referred as sensitive species, are we sensitive to the issues around. We have numerous chemicals, heavy metals and materials around us. We are still brewing new sets of synthetic creations from our laboratories with no counterparts in nature. Where are we leading towards?

With so much green washing around, now that most us care for the environment. We try and buy things made of recyclable/recycled materials, but these things which add up to your sensitivity quotient to environment might not be designed with further use in mind, I mean recycling these products towards their end of life.Recycling and reshaping them would have cost us more energy and additives than it’s entire life cycle. It might release more harmful byproducts than it’s previous life cycle.

Forget the recycled products. Let us deal with certain aspects from our daily life.

Soaps and detergents, this one is the best example of man’s passion for simplifying things, Universal design. Single soap for the entire country, even though water qualities and needs differ from place to place. Imagine the strength of a detergent to strip off hard stains, to work efficiently in hard or saline or soft water, classic case of “designed for the worst case scenario”. What would happen when they are treated as sewage effluents, when they come in contact with aquatic lives in the rivers nearby?

Then our beloved PET bottles, the source of water for many of us in recent times is capable enough to leach out antimony into the contents stored in them. Are we aware of this, do we have a positive alternative to this?

Take out your wallet and see, how many plastic cards we carry around, we use at least one of them everyday, and we wear around some of them all day (ID cards). Does any of them have it’s material mentioned with, so sad, there are 90% chances that they were made of PVC.

And definitely your leather wallet, there are chances that they were tanned using hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.

The computer which I use, made of brominated flame retardant chemicals, have heavy metals like cadmium, mercury and lead.Those compact discs made of Polycarbonate has bisphenol-A, which can mimic body hormones.

And the dust particle from the 3 in 1 printer/photocopier/scanner has nickel and cobalt. Imagine the kind of indoor air quality that will persist in this environment.No wonder 90% of world’s population has developed some kind of allergic sensation.

More over, we always go wrong when it comes to the debate of “Plastic or Paper”.

And our food and cooking; we might be ingesting genetically modified food products unintentionally and fluropolymers from our non-stick cook wares every day.

I need another hundred pages to explain why these things that I mentioned are not completely safe. I will try and address them in the forthcoming articles. And frankly! I am not trying to scare people away; many of these things have effective and positive alternatives too, but who cares?