Popularizing rice

Prime Minister D M Jayaratne has welcomed the increase in the price of bread and wheat flour. Addressing a public function in his Gampola constituency the Premier made a case for further increasing the price of bread and wheat flour.

He was naturally alarmed that not only was the country losing valuable foreign exchange that go towards importing wheat flour but also by the fact that the people who at one time ate three meals of rice a day were now hooked on bread and food made out of wheat flour.

The Premier was only echoing the sentiments expressed by eminent persons on the harm that could be caused by our overdependence of bread and wheat flour based products.

As an individual coming from essentially a rural background the Premier is all too aware of the negative fall-out on the rural economy by not only the penchant for bread eating by the rural population but other invading influences that could drastically change the eating habits of the village population as can be seen from spread of well known food chain outlets far and wide across the country.

Hot on the heels of the Premier’s injunction to people to consume rice giving up the bread eating habit the Patriotic National Movement too issued a media release hailing the increase in the price of wheat flour, asserting that this would increase the price of wheat flour based products including bread thus encouraging people to turn to rice and rice flour products. It also pointed to the valuable foreign exchange the country would be able to save by such a move.

There was a vigorous move to promote the consumption of rice based products not long ago and even bread made out of rice flour was popularized. But this campaign too lost steam as with all other campaigns that started with much fanfare.

It is hoped that this would be revived and the virtues and benefits of rice consumption be instilled into the people especially given the heavy toll taken on the health of the public resulting from the increase in the consumption of bread and wheat flour based products across the country.

The move by the Government to once again promote the consumption of rice and rice based products is a step in the right direction. True, this coincides with the decision by the Government to remove duty waivers granted to wheat flour importers and the resultant rise in the price of bread and wheat flour products.

However, there is no gainsaying the value of reverting back to our staple if we are to produce a healthy nation. For it is no denying that consumption of bread and wheat based products have contributed to increase in diseases such as diabetes.

The increasingly sedentary lifestyles led by the majority of our people especially in the cities have exacerbated the problem. Also in today’s fast pace life there is a tendency to go for fast food or snacks.

No more do we see the well known buth mula carried by office workers. What happened to those army of cyclists with their lunch carriers who roamed the Fort and Pettah in the good old days to deliver the mid day meal of rice to the Mercantile establishments?

Today, the rice eating habit among the majority of population is gradually fading to be replaced by a penchant for fast food which needless to say are unhealthy and a purveyor of diseases. One way of confronting the problem of course is to increase the price of wheat flour though if this alone would get our people back to the rice eating habit is a moot point.

It should be backed up with an aggressive campaign to highlight the advantages of rice consumption as against the dire consequences of bread eating among a wider section of our population.

This should be augmented by steps to fight the strategies used by

Multinational food chains to promote fast foods that have had a stranglehold on a people especially our youth, if one goes by the roaring trade at the ubiquitous Pizza huts and other well known multinational food chain outlets which have also made inroads into the rural areas that have hitherto been brought up on a diet of rice.