Hyderabad: Washing rice ahead of cooking defeats purpose?

Hyderabad: Doubts expressed over the practical usage of Central government's prescription of Fortified Rice Kernels (FRK) in a bid to overcome the problem of broken rice during the Rabi season.

According to sources in the State Civil Supplies Corporation, the Centre has told the State government that it will not be procuring parboiled rice due to lack of demand.

The State government, however, said that due to humidity and other parameters during the paddy cultivation has resulted in higher percentage of yielding broken rice during the milling process and to avoid the same, millers have been producing parboiled rice.

Against this backdrop, the Centre, in a letter to the State government, made it clear that it would not buy parboiled rice, to which the State even agreed.

To solve the problem faced with the higher percentage of broken rice yields, the Centre has asked the State government to take up the issue with rice millers to update their technology to come up with FRK and also encourage mills to produce rice bran oil.

The Centre aims to provide FRK under the mid-day meal programme. The process of FRK involves turning the broken rice into rice flour and blending it with the much-needed vitamins and other essential nutrients; to make them into rice kernels. The objective is to provide nutritious mid-day meals to school children.

However, the process of cooking of rice impedes the final objective of providing nutritious meals. Before cooking rice, it is cleaned thoroughly with water twice or thrice. "If the same cleaning process is done with FRK with water twice or thrice before cooking, the process will defeat the very purpose of providing nutritious food as all the vitamins and minerals added to the rice will get washed away," a headmaster of a school opined.