Akua Page: Food is the easiest way to get somebody
to open up to you.
Dr. Terri Long: Rice is one of the most important
staples in the world. And so if you can manipulate that
nutrition and rice and you can really impact people all
across the world,
Niba: Every day, hundreds of 1000s of bowls of rice are
made. It's one of the world's most popular foods.
Important in culture, community, and cuisine. But
what if this popular food could also fight one of the
world's most common nutrient deficiencies, iron
deficiency—anemia. I'm Niba. Plant geneticists turned
content creator now exploring the wonders of
flora in our lives. On this show, we're gonna journey to
the community members and scientists who use delicious
food to merge culture with problem solving. Welcome to
Hungry Planet, let's dig in.
Researchers are using new genetic tools to help plants
like rice get better at absorbing nutrients from
their environment. This could boost levels of
important minerals like iron in diets. Researcher Dr.
Terri Long is trying to make iron more accessible in
common foods by studying plant genes.
Dr. Terri Long: There really needs to be a greater
understanding of how we can manipulate the molecular
mechanisms that plants utilize to perhaps create
plants that are more nutritious and that can
tolerate nutrient poor soils. So we can understand
the molecular mechanisms that plants utilize to
uptake iron, to respond to iron deficiency, and then to
move iron from one part of the plant to the next part
of the plant in which we actually eat, then we could
perhaps make plants that would really help address
this global issue of anemia.
Niba: Over the years different research groups
have tried to increase the bioavailable iron and rice
to combat iron deficiency. But for iron to give people
the nutrients they need, it has to blend into the meals
they're already eating and to be delicious.
We're in Charleston, South Carolina, to talk about
Carolina gold rice, a dish central to the Gullah
Geechee community. I'm going to hang out with Akua Page.
She's a member of this community and also leads
cultural tours, and runs her own YouTube channel teaching
others about the Gullah Geechee culture. Akua and
other community members are trying to make healthy,
nutrient rich food more accessible, while also
keeping their history and cultural life.
Akua Page: So Gullah Geechee people, we are descendants
of the different mixture of different people from West
Central Africa. We all came together and gave birth to a
whole new culture which we now have today, which is
called Gullah Geechee.
Niba: The Gullah Geechee community comes from West
Africans brought over through the slave trade. The
community mostly exists as a cultural corridor along the
coast from Florida to North Carolina
Akua Page: We're descendants of farmers and
agriculturalists who were turned into slaves to build
America's economy, which was really based on agriculture.
Niba: Although there's still some debate on the exact
time of its debut, many scientists think rice as we
know it, first appeared around 9000 years ago in the
Yangzi Valley. And scientists have used its DNA
to help reconstruct its history, like building a
family tree. From the Yangzi Valley, rice moved into
Southeast Asia. Scientists believe people domesticated
rice in China and Southeast Asia between 4,000 to 6,500
years ago, cultivating that wild plant to meet their
needs, increasing yields and making it easier to grow.
There's more than 100,000 varieties of rice around the
world. Today, rice is grown in over 100 countries around
the world, and is a staple food for more than half the
world's population.
The type of rice that was brought here was brought
from West Africa, right? Like very, like hearty rice,
right?
Akua Page: Yeah, they call the Carolina gold rice,
which is actually an African rice.
Niba: So how was the rice from West Africa, like
brought over from there?
Akua Page: Women who are being captured during
slavery, they would braid the rice seeds into their
hair. And they did that for a couple of different
reasons. One for food, because there wasn't, you
know, enough being given on the ships. And also, because
they knew wherever they landed at, you know, a lot
of them already had this idea, "I'm going to run
away." Like, I'm not about to stay on whatever
plantation, I'm going to run away. Right. So they also
was like they needed food so they can run away.
Rollen Chlamers: You know, the skills and they brought
from Africa, it was really remarkable. Knowing how much
water to put on this rice, the skill to have to keep
the weeds and everything out of this rice. These people
really know what they were doing. To produce that much
rice to send to other countries, you know, you had
to have some kind of knowledge in how to build
these fields for that water to spread evenly across the
field.
Niba: Over the past few decades, researchers have
developed rice strains that better accumulate iron in
that edible kernel. But it's important to not only make
sure the rice can accumulate iron there, but also that it
can take it up from the soil—even in areas where
iron is scarce.
Dr. Terri Long: Ideally, we begin to try to find what's
called orthologs or similar genes in other crop species.
And then we could begin to either use traditional
breeding approaches or we can use genetic
modifications to try to modify those same genes in
important crop species.
Niba: Anemia happens when your body doesn't have
enough red blood cells. This could be because of genetic
disorders, medications or an iron deficiency. And can
lead to a bunch of health problems from fatigue to
weakness to cognitive impairment. And if it goes
untreated, anemia can lead to further complications
like heart failure.
Why do you study anemia specifically?
Dr. Terri Long: I study it in part because it's one of
the most prevalent nutritional disorders in the
world. I'm anemic. Many women that I know are
anemic. So I figured I would combine this interest and my
love of plants in to a pathway to maybe help
someone in the future one day.
Dr. Terri Long: So women in general are more prone to
Niba: Around 5 to 6% of the US population is anemic,
with pregnant, female, and black communities being at
anemia because of their menstrual cycle, and of
course women of childbearing age are particularly
even higher risk.
susceptible to iron deficiency. A number of
studies, interestingly, have found that black people have
lower hemoglobin levels. Hemoglobin, which is an iron
rich protein that carries oxygen from your lungs to
the rest of your body. Inflammation is also
associated with anemia, because you're not able to
actually properly utilize iron to make hemoglobin and
enough red blood cells.
Niba: As a staple food for over 3.5 billion people,
rice is a vital source of vitamins and minerals like
magnesium, phosphorus, and niacin. Unlike white rice,
brown rice still has its nutritious outer layer, the
brand, so it can have even more nutrients like B
vitamins and extra fiber. Rice can also contain iron,
though concentrations can be higher in the inedible husk
than the interior endosperm and brand.
Dr. Terri Long: The minerals that are in the soil and in
the Earth's crust, the only way we can get access to
them is through plants. The problem of iron availability
is not necessarily a problem of the amount of iron in the
soil, the problem is that is not biologically available.
Niba: Plants respond to this by pumping substances like
protons or acidic compounds into the soil to make the
iron more soluble.
Dr. Terri Long: Iron is literally transported into
the outer layers of the root called the epidermis. If
from there it travels in between cells and through
cells, until it's literally dumped into what's called
the vasculature. Specifically, the xylem and
goes into the water and then it's moved through this
xylem from the root to the shoot. You can eat a very
high iron food, but if you're not also eating the
other nutrients that help increase the availability of
iron then it's all kind of for not. So it's really not
just about iron, it's also about eating whole
nutritious foods that allow all of the minerals in the
foods to become biologically available.
Unknown: Can I get one large red rice. And then one
seafood rice, please.
Rollen Chlamers: Okay, anything else, ma'am?
Niba: I think that's good. I don't know if we need
anything else.
Alright, Thank you. You guys have blessed day.
You too, thank you.
Sweet, I'm so excited to try this.
Akua Page: It is. It's just awkward because y'all
starring at me. You can make so many different dishes
with rice. I like to tell people you can make 100
different meals with rice. Along with fruit and
vegetables, meat, or whatever you do, you can get
so creative with it. For example, this right here is
a vegetarian kind of rice. It's mushrooms and okra and
topped with some peppers.
Niba: That looks delicious. I love that. You're bringing
a lot of like, this kind of nutritious food to your
community, right? Is it— has it been challenging to do
that? What kind of stuff has the community been lacking
in food?
Akua Page: Gullah Geechee food was honestly plant
based since we lived off the land and the sea. So we
utilized a lot of different vegetables in our meals. But
there's a huge food apartheid going on within a
lot of Gullah Geechee communities where people no
longer have access to fresh fruit and vegetables. That's
something that was constructed by laws that
created the separation as to why people don't have access
to fresh fruits and vegetables, which goes down
to politics. It let's people think deeper about it. Why
don't certain people have access to healthy fresh
fruits and vegetables? And what can you do to make sure
people do have that.
Niba: Making sure everyone has access to nutritious
food is important to fight health issues like high
blood pressure, diabetes, and anemia. And because of
the risks associated with anemia, researchers are
trying to find easy ways to get more iron into people's
diets, especially in communities of color that
are hit the hardest.
Dr. Terri Long: A combination of socio
economic, physiological, and health disparities are what
contribute overall to black women and girls struggling
with anemia.
Niba: Do you have a sense of like how many research labs
have tried to increase iron in plants and why so many of
them are focusing on rice?
Dr. Terri Long: I think because rice is one of the
most important staples in the world. And so, if you
can manipulate that in rice, and manipulate other aspects
of nutrition in rice, you can really impact people all
across the world.
Niba: Introducing iron into a food as popular as rice
could help people with anemia bump up their iron
intake. And this is just one example of how science can
make plants more nutritious and make nutrients more
accessible to everyone. But in the end, what matters
most is the people who eat it.
Unknown: Food is like, the easiest way to really get
somebody to open up to you, and to like teach them. So I
feel like, if you're like, meeting people basic needs
it's also easier for them to be open to listen to like
other things.
Niba: Hungry for more? Let us know in the comments
below which foods you'd like to know more about next.