Silent famine

Plants absorb nutrients from soil and water through roots and those nutrients help plants grow and develop. When we eat plants — or animals that eat plants — we get nutrients. In this way, the soil provides essential nutrients not just to plants, but to all living things through the food chain. From the very beginning of the Green Revolution (GR) introduced in 1967, plant genetics have been so obsessed with growing more food that they no longer do the fundamental job of delivering nutrition from soil to foodgrains

- JAYDEV JANA The writer is a retired IAS officer

In 1884, the first correlation between beriberi and a dietary factor was made by Takaki Kanehiro, a Japanese Naval doctor. He noticed that crews on ships fed unpolished rice had fewer beriberi cases than those fed polished rice. Later, Christian Eijkman in the Dutch East Indies (Now, Indonesia) demonstrated that polished rice could induce beriberi in chickens and this could be reversed by feeding them unpolished rice. This experiment provided strong evidence that beriberi was linked to food, especially the lack of a nutrient in polished rice.

Eijkman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1929 because his observation led to the discovery of Vitamin B1 (Thiamine). Similarly, scurvy was found to be linked with nutrient Vitamin C which we normally get from our foods. It is also well known that there are so many other essential nutrients we regularly get from our foods such as carbohydrate, proteins, iodine, phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), Iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), sodium (Na), potassium (K) etc. which play a vital role in our well-being. The foundation of our health is what we eat.