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Naive Question: Wouldn't a multivitamin be a cheaper and safer solution to counter a broad range of vitamin deficiencies? If not, why would growing crops be a

Naive Question: Wouldn't a multivitamin be a cheaper and safer solution to counter a broad range of vitamin deficiencies? If not, why would growing crops be a cheaper solution? What is the opportunity cost of growing golden rice to feed your vitamin deficient family vs. growing something else to sell on a broader market?

Aloha 7y ago
Or just enriching the rice
- aurizon 7y ago
  These countries are riddled with corruption at all levels. Any enriching agent would be taken by the person tasked with enrichment and sold, the poor would get nothing and suffer the deficiences. This way the color tells the tale. Greenpeace, Bryce and all his cronies need to be tossed into a pit full of mambas. Audit Greenpeace very throughly, remove their deductions and track the officers and strip all the other lairs of these crooks
  - bureaucrat 7y ago
    Yeah, this is the reason why I don’t donate even a cent to charities that ‘claims’ to help Africans and North Koreans. I’d rather give a dollar to the local homeless shelter and watch them burn fuel with it at night, than my cent going straight to corrupt governments and militias.
jfim 7y ago
It's easier to piggyback on an existing behavior (keep on eating rice, but use this different kind of rice) than creating a new behavior (eat this vitamin pill). On the consumer side, one can explain that the new golden rice is better and keeps your family healthier than regular rice. It's simple enough to be understood by people with low levels of education that the yellow one is better, and can easily be communicated to other members of the family who may not be able to read. There might be issues with counterfeit rice (dyed yellow instead of being actual golden rice), but that would be a separate problem. In the cases where new behaviors are wanted, it helps to root them in culturally specific ways. For example, for iron supplementation, one way to increase the amount of iron consumed is to use a few drops of acid (such as citrus juice) combined with an iron ingot. This was done to alleviate iron deficiency in South East Asia. Obviously, this was a very foreign behavior with low compliance, until they reshaped the ingots to be fish shaped, leading to the "lucky iron fish." Explaining to people that if they cook with the lucky fish in their pot, the fish will bring them good luck and health. This has led to much better compliance and outcomes.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Also see iodine supplementation, enriched flour, fortified milk.
  - cperciva 7y ago
    Also, the "lucky fish" made of iron which, when placed into a cooking pot, prevents iron deficiency in millions of children.
    - nomadluap 7y ago
      This is literally explained by the parent comment.
      - cpach 7y ago
        Is it...?
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Supposedly the cause of the big reduction in metaly deficient children in the USA over the last 70 years or so.
samplatt 7y ago
The vitamins in multivitamins have to come from somewhere. It's much cheaper & easier to engineer an organism to provide these vitamins all in one go, rather than having a whole suite of plants and animals that produce these different things.
- aries1980 7y ago
  Not necessarily. The level of nutrients found in food varies considerably, even in the same food from season to season and batch to batch. Many of the vitamins and minerals are cheaper to produce at high quality with industrial production, such as ascorbic acid (around $12/kg - https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/10836-vitamin-c-prices-triple-in-a-year-s-time https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/10836-vitamin-c-pr...). The dosage can be more precise in this way. Also with diabetes and certain other illness, some nutrients can't be taken at a required level from natural sources due the amount of other nutrients, e.g. carbohydrates.
Chathamization 7y ago
Vitamin A supplements are a cheap and effective solution, and one that groups like the WHO have focused on[1]. They almost never come up when golden rice is discussed, because discussions of golden rice seem to be more about pushing on particular kind of tech than about discussing the best way to solve the problem. [1] https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/vitamin-a-deficiency/ https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/vitamin-a-deficiency...
stickfigure 7y ago
If you think "safer", watch this case study of a kid who consumed enough gummy vitamins to get Hypervitaminosis A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6nREONy_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6nREONy_4 Making vitamins taste like candy increases compliance (good), but you can overdose on fat-soluble vitamins like A (bad). "Just take a pill" is not a great solution.
- RandomInteger4 7y ago
  Or just make them taste like taking a pill which isn't supposed to be chewed or overconsumed. I never said anything about making vitamins taste good, nor do I think outliers like the case study discussed in the video are relevant to the general population, especially when the situation discussed in the video is a "fish out of water" scenario and not something relevant to a 3rd world resident living in the 3rd world where the native languages are being used. Also, since when do we need "compliance" with regard to offering a cheap solution to a common problem that isn't infectious? People are intelligent enough to know what they should do. Let them have the free will to take the solution or not. We don't need to force or seek "compliance". That just sounds kind of dystopian or authoritarian.

Aloha 7y ago

Or just enriching the rice

aurizon 7y ago
These countries are riddled with corruption at all levels. Any enriching agent would be taken by the person tasked with enrichment and sold, the poor would get nothing and suffer the deficiences. This way the color tells the tale. Greenpeace, Bryce and all his cronies need to be tossed into a pit full of mambas. Audit Greenpeace very throughly, remove their deductions and track the officers and strip all the other lairs of these crooks
- bureaucrat 7y ago
  Yeah, this is the reason why I don’t donate even a cent to charities that ‘claims’ to help Africans and North Koreans. I’d rather give a dollar to the local homeless shelter and watch them burn fuel with it at night, than my cent going straight to corrupt governments and militias.

jfim 7y ago

It's easier to piggyback on an existing behavior (keep on eating rice, but use this different kind of rice) than creating a new behavior (eat this vitamin pill). On the consumer side, one can explain that the new golden rice is better and keeps your family healthier than regular rice. It's simple enough to be understood by people with low levels of education that the yellow one is better, and can easily be communicated to other members of the family who may not be able to read. There might be issues with counterfeit rice (dyed yellow instead of being actual golden rice), but that would be a separate problem. In the cases where new behaviors are wanted, it helps to root them in culturally specific ways. For example, for iron supplementation, one way to increase the amount of iron consumed is to use a few drops of acid (such as citrus juice) combined with an iron ingot. This was done to alleviate iron deficiency in South East Asia. Obviously, this was a very foreign behavior with low compliance, until they reshaped the ingots to be fish shaped, leading to the "lucky iron fish." Explaining to people that if they cook with the lucky fish in their pot, the fish will bring them good luck and health. This has led to much better compliance and outcomes.

microcolonel 7y ago
Also see iodine supplementation, enriched flour, fortified milk.
- cperciva 7y ago
  Also, the "lucky fish" made of iron which, when placed into a cooking pot, prevents iron deficiency in millions of children.
  - nomadluap 7y ago
    This is literally explained by the parent comment.
    - cpach 7y ago
      Is it...?
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Supposedly the cause of the big reduction in metaly deficient children in the USA over the last 70 years or so.

samplatt 7y ago

The vitamins in multivitamins have to come from somewhere. It's much cheaper & easier to engineer an organism to provide these vitamins all in one go, rather than having a whole suite of plants and animals that produce these different things.

aries1980 7y ago
Not necessarily. The level of nutrients found in food varies considerably, even in the same food from season to season and batch to batch. Many of the vitamins and minerals are cheaper to produce at high quality with industrial production, such as ascorbic acid (around $12/kg - https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/10836-vitamin-c-prices-triple-in-a-year-s-time https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/10836-vitamin-c-pr...). The dosage can be more precise in this way. Also with diabetes and certain other illness, some nutrients can't be taken at a required level from natural sources due the amount of other nutrients, e.g. carbohydrates.

Chathamization 7y ago

Vitamin A supplements are a cheap and effective solution, and one that groups like the WHO have focused on[1]. They almost never come up when golden rice is discussed, because discussions of golden rice seem to be more about pushing on particular kind of tech than about discussing the best way to solve the problem. [1] https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/vitamin-a-deficiency/ https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/vitamin-a-deficiency...

stickfigure 7y ago

If you think "safer", watch this case study of a kid who consumed enough gummy vitamins to get Hypervitaminosis A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6nREONy_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6nREONy_4 Making vitamins taste like candy increases compliance (good), but you can overdose on fat-soluble vitamins like A (bad). "Just take a pill" is not a great solution.

RandomInteger4 7y ago
Or just make them taste like taking a pill which isn't supposed to be chewed or overconsumed. I never said anything about making vitamins taste good, nor do I think outliers like the case study discussed in the video are relevant to the general population, especially when the situation discussed in the video is a "fish out of water" scenario and not something relevant to a 3rd world resident living in the 3rd world where the native languages are being used. Also, since when do we need "compliance" with regard to offering a cheap solution to a common problem that isn't infectious? People are intelligent enough to know what they should do. Let them have the free will to take the solution or not. We don't need to force or seek "compliance". That just sounds kind of dystopian or authoritarian.