Rice: The Beginning On The Story Of Vitamins

Story Of Rice

 

Archaeological evidence shows rice was cultivated in the Yangtze River valley around 8000–9000 years ago. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rice To Vitamin Theory 

 

 

 

                                                  Casimir Funk (1912) – vitamin theory

Casimir Funk (1884–1967) was a Polish biochemist known as the "father of vitamins" who in 1911–1912 isolated a nutrient from rice bran that cured beriberi, which he identified as a "vitamine" (later Vitamin B1/thiamine). 

He coined the term "vitamine" and proposed that specific deficiency diseases were caused by lack of these essential micronutrients 

• Isolated anti-beriberi factor from rice polishings
• Proposed the term vitamine
• Suggested diseases like beriberi are due to missing nutrients

 

First Vitamin From Rice 

 

 

 

 

 

Thiamine Deficiency And Beri Beri

 

 Nobel Prize In Medicine, 1929

Christiaan Eijkman worked in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Important experiment:

• Chickens fed polished rice → paralysis
• Chickens fed unpolished rice → recovered

He concluded:

• Rice bran contained a protective substance

This discovery led to the idea of deficiency diseases.

Eijkman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thiamine And Krebs Cycle 

 

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is essential for the Krebs cycle (TCA cycle) because it is required for key enzyme reactions that allow carbohydrates to be converted into energy.

Thiamine works in the body as thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP), a coenzyme needed for oxidative decarboxylation reactions.

 

 

 

Brain depends on glucose → needs Krebs cycle → needs thiamine.

Deficiency → ↓ ATP → neuronal injury

Diseases:

• Wernicke encephalopathy

• Korsakoff syndrome

• Beriberi

   

   
   
   
   
   
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