What do I mean by processed? The classic example is the milling of grains from whole wheat to white flour. Isn’t it ironic that these are called “refined” grains, a word meaning improved or made more elegant? The elegance was not felt by the millions who died in the nineteenth century from beriberi, a vitamin B–deficiency disease that resulted from polishing rice from brown to white.36 (White rice is now fortified with vitamins to compensate for the “refinement.”) A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the cause of beriberi and its cure—rice bran, the brown part of rice that was
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