Hahabogus > writes:

>(PENMART01) wrote
>
>> Couscous is pasta, duh.
>>
>
>couscous
>[KOOS-koos]
>A staple of North African cuisine, couscous is granular SEMOLINA.

Like I said, pasta. Same as most other other pasta, couscous is made from a
dough of semolina flour, rubbed to form an irregularly shaped granular pasta.
Naturally semolina (the endosperm of Durum wheat) is not whole grain, its bran
has been removed, same as with other pastas, same as it is with couscous made
with cracked semolina. Couscous in of itself is not very nutritious, same with
pasta... with both, their nutrition depends primarilly on the added ingredients
used in the dish, same as with white rice... they are just starch. If your
diet consisted primarilly of plain couscous and/or white rice you'd certainly
die a long and very painful death, essentially by starvation.

Encyclopædia Britannica Article

beriberi

also called vitamin B1 deficiency, nutritional disorder caused by a deficiency
of vitamin B1 (thiamine) and characterized by impairment of the nerves and
heart. General symptoms include loss of appetite and overall lassitude,
digestive irregularities, and a feeling of numbness and weakness in the limbs
and extremities. (The term beriberi is derived from the Sinhalese word meaning
€œextreme weakness.€�) In the form known as dry beriberi, there is a gradual
degeneration of the long nerves, first of the legs and then of the arms, with
associated atrophy of muscle and loss of reflexes. In wet beriberi, a more
acute form, there is edema (overabundance of fluid in the tissues) resulting
largely from cardiac failure and poor circulation. In infants breast-fed by
mothers who are deficient in thiamine, beriberi may lead to rapidly progressing
heart failure.

The cardiac symptoms, in both infants and adults, generally respond promptly
and dramatically to the administration of thiamine. When neurological
involvement is present, response to thiamine therapy is much more gradual; in
more severe cases, the structural lesions of the nerve cells may be
irreversible.

Thiamine normally plays an essential role as a coenzyme in the metabolism of
carbohydrates; in its absence, pyruvic acid and lactic acid (products of
carbohydrate digestion) accumulate in the tissues, where they are believed to
be responsible for most of the neurological and cardiac manifestations.

Vitamin B1 occurs widely in food but may be lost in the course of processing,
particularly in the milling of grains. In East Asian countries, where polished
white rice is a dietary staple, beriberi has been known for over 1,000 years.
The history of the recognition, the cause, and the cure of beriberi is dramatic
and is well documented in medical literature. In the 1870s the Japanese navy
reported that beriberi had been eradicated among its sailors as a result of
adding extra meat, fish, and vegetables to their regular diet. Before that
time, almost half of the sailors were likely to develop beriberi, and many died
of it. In 1897 Christiaan Eijkman , working in the Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia), showed that a beriberi-like disease could be produced in chickens
by a diet of polished rice. That beriberi in humans was also related to the
ingestion of white rice was confirmed by British researchers in Malaysia.
There, W. Fletcher in 1907 and Henry Fraser and A.T. Stanton in 1909 showed
that in selected groups under close observation beriberi occurred in persons
who were eating a polished-rice diet whereas those eating parboiled or brown
rice did not develop the disease. In 1912 Casimir Funk demonstrated that
beriberi could be cured in pigeons by feeding them a concentrate made from rice
polishings. Following this discovery he proposed that this, as well as several
other conditions, were due to the ingestion of diets that were deficient in
specific factors which he termed €œvitamines.€�

The incidence of beriberi in Asia has markedly decreased, partly because an
improved standard of living has allowed a more varied diet and partly because
of the gradual popular acceptance of partially dehusked, parboiled, and
enriched rice€”forms that contain higher concentrations of thiamine. The
prevention of beriberi is accomplished by eating a well-balanced diet, since
thiamine is present in most raw and untreated foods. In Western countries,
thiamine deficiency is encountered almost solely in cases of chronic
alcoholism.

Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=80894>
[Accessed October 19, 2003].



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