Rice Function for Disease Prevention and Establishment of Medical Rice Association

Abstract

When I visited Bangkok in Thailand about five years ago, I saw the label “medical rice” on a package of ‘diabetes and health
promotion’ rice, and I was hopeful that the concept could be widened beyond Thailand. On December 10-12, 2014, the “East Asia
Functional Standardization of Rice Conference” was held at Kyoto Research Park to promote the idea among related countries.
Since then, I am considering what is “medical rice”.1 To say ‘medical rice’ we need evidence from human studies. We have
learned of the health effects of unpolished brown rice, genmai in Japanese, from Japanese history. Sagen Ishizuka (1850-1909) was a
pioneer doctor in the Imperial Japanese Army who proposed the concepts of shokuiku (eating education) and the macrobiotic diet.
He was one of the first to investigate the nutritional value of whole grains as well as kelp, radish, and kudzu.2 In Kenji Miyazawa’s famous poem “Unbeaten by rain, Unbeaten by wind”, his daily intake “With a handful brown rice a day, miso and a small amount of vegetable suffice” was confirmed to contain all necessary daily nutrients by our recalculation.