Indigenous Rice: A Mental Health Perspective

A Research done by Clinical Psychologist Dr.Julia Rucklidge, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, says that Mental health is directly related to nutritional intake. Her research shows increase in nutritional intake not only helps to cure mental illness like depression, ADHD(Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), autism, bipolar disorder but also act as a prevention measure for many mental health disorders. It has been proven that high nutritional intake was very effective in treating ADHD children who were failed by ordinary Psychiatric medication.

India's Indigenous rice seed diversity is so large that there was more than 2 lakh varieties of Traditional rice seeds grown throughout the country in 1950s. That is, if a person tastes, one rice for a day, it would take more than 200 years to taste all different types of rice of India.

Our research shows that India's traditional rice varieties are found to be nutrition rich with many essential micro-nutrition needed for our human body. Now, its obvious that, if we want a mental healthy society, then we need to switch to indigenous traditional nutrition rich foods and reject hybrid and GM foods.

Almost all food we eat today are produced from hybrid seeds that were introduced during Green revolution in 1960s. Foods of hybrid seeds have high toxic pesticide residue that are proven to be carcinogens. Also, these foods don't have adequate nutrition that are essential for human body. But anyways, they were peddled successfully by Indian Government as a part of commercializing Indian agriculture in the name of Green revolution for the corporate welfare.

Now, we have only 1% of indigenous rice seeds out of 2 lakh traditional rice seeds. Remaining, 99% seeds are extinct from the farmers. But, Bill Gates's agri-business Corporate Empire, Bayer, which is the largest agri-business corporation of the world, has all extinct indigenous rice seeds stored in their private laboratory. They are waiting for us to fall, so that they can capture the food supply chain by controlling seeds.

Its high time we understand the importance of traditional seeds and politics behind it, for achieving food security of the nation.

Click here to know more about Dr. Julia's Research on Nutrition