"Converted Rice"

Media

Part of The Cross

Title: "Converted Rice"
Language: English
Year: 1951
Rights
Fulltext: The white hope of Asia "Converted Rice" From This Month The hope of Asia and the ravaged islands of the South Pacific rests in a tiny white grain rice. Not the familiar polished capsule of starch ccated with talc and glucose which is the staple food of Asia's millions, but a new processed grain, produced in America and called "converted The mon who swallowed years of failure and frustration to put converted rice into production is a determined Texan of mild manners and middle age. His name is Gordon Harwell. Before the war, Harwell wos a broker in Houston, Texas, the rice center of the Southwest. He had long been struck by the contrast between white rice ond brown and had determined to find o milling method that would combine the eye-pleasing qualities of polished rice with the immense vitomin value of field rice. Borrowing his wife's pressure cooker, Harwell set up o backyard laboratory and began to sweat over steaming pots of rice. He worked for years, but he never solved his problem. Meanwhile the rumblings of the coming European wor were driving hundreds of German scientists across the English Channel, where they would be assured freedom of scientific research. One of them wos a biochemist named Eric G. Huzenlaub. With the long-ronge plan of breaking the cycle of famine in Indio, Eric Huzenlaub had spent ten years perfecting a new processed rice. He wanted to strengthen the walls of the groin against invasion by the deadly parasitic weevil, which makes storage of rice for any length of t;me impossible. And he wanted to enrich the edible part of the rice plant to raise the health level of the Orient. After studying the vitamin content of rice husks and bran, he set to work to instill in the white heort of the rice grain all the health giving elements that were ripped off with the husks when the groin wos polished. Huzenlaub succeeded where Harwell had failed. He constructed a huge, cylindrical vacuum which drew the air out of the paddy, or thrashed rice. Then, under tremendous pressure, the water-soluble nutrients and minerals of the rice husks and bran were pumped permanently into the heart of the rice grain. Thiamin and other vitamins could be added at this stage. 49 50 THE CROSS Huzenlaub then dumped his rice in a rotory steamer where the starch cells were broken down, welding broken grains together. When the grains (still encased in meat packages of husks) cooled, they <had a glozed surface which kept the vitamines in and the weevils out. Only then was the rice husked, leaving a translucent white grain. Huzenlaub entered his invention in the British Patent Office. Back in Texas, Gordon Harwell read of the new process. Here wos his answer. He began bombarding the biochemist with letters, cablegrams and transatlantic telephone calls, trying to interest him in a new rice industry for Texas. But Huzenlaub still cherished his old dream a string of reconverted rice mills across India. He had no use for a Houston broker. Finally Huzenlaub came to America, not to see Harwell, but to recruit American capital for his scheme of revitalizing the Asiatic rice industry. The Texan found him and proceeded to trail him. But he could make no impression on the biochemist. Then on accident occurred which turned the tide in Harwell's favor On the slippery pavement of a Texas airport ramp, Eric Huzenlaub fell and dislocated his shoulder. Having failed to raise American funds for his scheme, he was about tox board an airliner that would eventually, „ take him back to Britoin. Harwell's doily visits to the hospital finally convinced Huzenlaub that the determined Texan could ably carry the banner of. converted rice and promote its cause. Before the patient left the hospital, Harwell hod secured his signature to use the conversion method in America. To Gordon Harwell converted rice owes its international success. For Harwell set to work at once to mechanize the Huzenloub process. Priorities were squeezed, junk yards were scoured for spore parts, apd a plant wos assembled in a dusty, old Warehouse. Row with inexperience but dominated by the pioneer zeal of Horwell, the plant gradually smoothed into precise production- with 900 barrels a day. Outlet problems were solved when the Army investigated the qualities of the new processed rice and promptly contracted for almost the entire output. With the stamp of validity from the Quartermaster Corps on it, converted rice proved to be the ideal military stople. Major O. Wodrickof the Quartermaster Corps speaking before a convention of the American Association of Cereal Chemists in 1943, said thot Army tests had shown the weevil resistance of the rice to be "very great". He also stated that the rice cooks up very well ond has the advantage of remaining in separate particles instead of forming o gummy mass. Converted rice, he said, was tough ond durable, adaptable for long hauls and safe storage. Major Wodrick spoke only for the Army. He might have added, on beholf of the entire Orient for whom rice is the pledge of life, that the Huzenlaub process is one of the most APRIL, 1951 51 significant ond revolutionary developments in food history. Rice in Asio must be consumed ♦he year it is produced for weevils end deterioration quickly ruin the stored grain. Thus it is almost impossible to conserve bumper crops as a guard against lean years. A good harvest in India or China means plenty of rice; o bod harvest spells inevitable famine. To this condition, converted rice can put a final stop. During the process it becomes glazed with o \>rd, glassy surface which makes it ■fvil-proof and safe for. storage in usands of Asiatic granaries. Iqually important is the high nutJve value of the new rice. The c/riental diet suffers acutely from vitamin B deficiency which contributes to the dread disease, beriberi. Usual sources of the guardian vitamin are whole grain, lean pork, whole wheat bread, enriched flour, beans, nuts and eggs — all scarce items on Asiatic markets. Th^e "hard-to-get" items can now be replaced or supplemented by converted rice, recruited from the starch ranks and available in every Asiatic village. Loaded with vitamins, converted rice will raise the health level of half of martkind. The conversion method benefits the producer as much as the consumer. A high milling return is assured, meaning a better stacked granary or more money for crops. In the polishing method now practised, rice crops usually suffer a twenty per yit loss in milling. Converted rice. through o complete steaming whicn gelatinizes the Storch cells in the grain, attains resiliency that drastically reduces the number of broken Furthermore, the- paddy may be delivered to the conversion mill in almost any condition. The old polishing mills demand bone-dry paddy; the new mills will take it dry, wet, or nearly sprouting, thus eliminating the hazard of unfavorable weather at harvest time. A possible solution for Asia's food problem lies in the native-operated plants milling locally produced grain, for the conversion method requires few skilled workers who may be trained in as little as six weeks. Millers in thirty-six countries have already been licensed under the British potent held by Huzenlaub. In Houston, Texas, where the technique was first commercialized, o conversion plont spreads over a bayou bank. .It was constructed during the war at the request of the government to insure a steady supply to the front line. Now, the sparkling value of the pilot plant lies in its function os a demonstration center. At the plant, teachers moy be trained to instruct native operators. Foreign representatives may inspect the process,, and expedite its application to their homelands. For the billion inhabitants of India and the Far East who live or die by their dally bowl of rice, the new white grain may spell the end of undernourishment ond famine.