[food sizzling] [bright upbeat music] Food is the easiest way to get somebody to open up to you.

(speaker) Rice is one of the most important staples in the world, and so, if you can manipulate that nutrition in rice, you can really impact people all across the world.

(speaker) Every day, hundreds of thousands of bowls of rice are made.

It's one of the world's most popular foods, important in culture, community, and cuisine.

But what if this popular food could also fight one of the world's most common nutrient deficiencies?

Iron deficiency?

Anemia?

I'm Niba, plant geneticist turned content creator, now exploring the wonders of flora in our lives.

On this show, we're gonna journey to the community members and scientists who use delicious food to merge culture with problem solving.

Welcome to "Hungry Planet."

Let's dig in.

Researchers are using new genetic tools to help plants like rice get better at absorbing nutrients from their environment.

This could boost levels of important minerals like iron in diets.

Researcher Dr. Terry Long is trying to make iron more accessible in common foods by studying plant genes.

There really needs to be a greater understanding of how we can manipulate the molecular mechanisms that plants utilize to perhaps create plants that are more nutritious and that can tolerate nutrient-poor soils.

So we can understand the molecular mechanisms that plants utilize to uptake iron, to respond to iron deficiency, and then to move iron from one part of the plant to the next part of the plant in which we actually eat.

Then we can perhaps make plants that would really help address this global issue of anemia.

Over the years, different research groups have tried to increase the bioavailable iron in rice to combat iron deficiency, but for iron to give people the nutrients they need, it has to blend into the meals they're already eating and be delicious.

We're in Charleston, South Carolina, to talk about Carolina Gold rice, a dish central to the Gullah Geechee community.

I'm gonna hang out with Akua Page.

She's a member of this community and also leads cultural tours and runs her own YouTube channel, teaching others about the Gullah Geechee culture.

Akua and other community members are trying to make healthy, nutrient-rich food more accessible while also keeping their history and culture alive.

(Akua) So Gullah Geechee people, we are descendants of the different mixture of different people from West Central Africa.

We all came together and gave birth to a whole new culture which we now have today which is called Gullah Geechee.

The Gullah Geechee community comes from West Africans brought over through the slave trade.

The community mostly exists as a cultural corridor along the coast from Florida to North Carolina.

(Akua) We're descendants of farmers and agriculturalists who were turned into slaves to build America's economy, which is really based on the agriculture.

Although there's still some debate on the exact time of its debut, many scientists think rice as we know it, first appeared around 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley and scientists have used its DNA to help reconstruct its history like building a family tree.

From the Yangtze Valley, rice moved into Southeast Asia.

Scientists believe people domesticated rice in China and Southeast Asia between 4,000 and 6,500 years ago, cultivating that wild plant to meet their needs, increasing yields and making it easier to grow.

There's more than 100,000 varieties of rice around the world.

Today, rice is grown in over 100 countries around the world and is a staple food for more than half the world's population.

The type of rice that was brought here was brought from West Africa, right?

Like hearty rice, right?

Yeah, they call it Carolina Gold rice, but it's actually an African rice.

So how was the rice from West Africa brought over from there?

(Akua) Women who were being captured during slavery, they would braid the rice seeds onto their hair.

And they did that for a couple different reasons.

One, for food, 'cause there wasn't enough being given on the ships.

And then also, because they knew wherever they landed at, a lot of them already had this idea, "I'm gonna run away.

"I'm not about to stay on whatever plantation, I'm gonna run away."

-So they also-- -The bravery.

Right, so they also, like, they needed food so they can run away.

(speaker) You know, the skills that they brought from Africa, it was really remarkable.

Knowing how much water to put on this rice, the skill to have to keep the weeds and everything out of this rice, these people really knew what they were doing.

To produce that much rice to send to other countries, you know, you had to have some kind of knowledge in how to build these fields for that water to spread evenly across these fields.

(Niba) Over the past few decades, researchers have developed rice strains that better accumulate iron in that edible kernel.

But it's important to not only make sure the rice can accumulate iron there, but also that it can take it up from the soil, even in areas where iron is scarce.

Ideally, we begin to try to find what's called orthologs or similar genes in other crop species, and then we can begin to either use traditional breeding approaches or we can use genetic modifications to try to modify those same genes in important crop species.

(Niba) Anemia happens when your body doesn't have enough red blood cells.

This could be because of genetic disorders, medications, or an iron deficiency and can lead to a bunch of health problems, from fatigue to weakness to cognitive impairment.

And if it goes untreated, anemia can lead to further complications like heart failure.

Why do you study anemia specifically?

I study it in part because it's one of the most prevalent nutritional disorders in the world.

I'm anemic; many women that I know are anemic.

So I figured I would combine this interest and my love of plants into a pathway to maybe help someone in the future one day.

(Niba) Around 5 to 6% of the U.S. population is anemic, with pregnant, female, and Black communities being at even higher risk.

(Terri) So women in general are more prone to anemia because of their menstrual cycle.

And of course, women of childbearing age are particularly susceptible to iron deficiency.

A number of studies interestingly have found that Black people have lower hemoglobin levels.

Hemoglobin, which is an iron-rich protein that caries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body.

Inflammation is also associated with anemia because you're not able to actually properly utilize iron to make hemoglobin and therefore red blood cells.

As a staple food for over 3.5 billion people, rice is a vital source of vitamins and minerals like magnesium, phosphorus, and niacin.

Unlike white rice, brown rice still has its nutritious outer layer, the bran, so it can have even more nutrients like B vitamins and extra fiber.

Rice can also contain iron, though concentrations can be higher in the inedible husk than the interior endosperm and bran.

The minerals that are in the soil, that in there is crust, the only way we can get access to them is through plants.

The problem of iron availability is not necessarily a problem of the amount of iron in the soil; the problem is that it's not biologically available.

(Niba) Plants respond to this by pumping substances like protons or acidic compounds into the soil to make the iron more soluble.

(Terri) Iron is literally transported into the outer layers of the root called the epidermis.

And from there it travels in between cells and through cells until it's literally dumped into what's called a vasculature, specifically the xylem.

Iron goes into the water and then it's moved through the xylem from the root to the chute.

You can eat a very high iron food but if you are not also eating the other nutrients that help increase the availability of iron, then it's all kind of for naught.

So it's really not just about iron; it's also about eating whole nutritious foods that allow all of the minerals in the food to become biologically available.

[bright upbeat music] (Speaker) There we go, cool.

Can I get one large red rice... (Attendant) One large red rice.

(Niba) And then one seafood rice, please.

I need one large seafood rice, please.

Okay, anything else, ma'am?

I think that's good, I don't know if we need anything else.

All right, thank you.

Guys, have a best day.

You too, thank you.

[bright upbeat music] Sweet, I'm so excited to try this.

(Producer) Is it good?

How is it?

It is, it's just awkward 'cause y'all staring at me.

[Niba and the producer laughs] You can make so many different dishes with rice.

I like to tell people you can make over a 100 different meals with rice as long as you got some vegetables, meat, or whatever you do, you can get so creative with it.

For example, this right here is a vegetarian kinda rice.

It's mushrooms and okra on the top with some peppers.

(Niba) That looks delicious, I love that.

You're bringing a lot of like this kind of nutritious food to your community, right?

Has it been challenging to do that?

What kind of stuff has the community been lacking in food?

Gullah Geechee food was honestly plant-based since we lived off the land and the sea.

And so we utilized a lot of different vegetables in our meals.

But there's a huge food apartheid going on within a lot of Gullah Geechee communities where people no longer have access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

That's something that was constructed by laws that created the separation as to why people don't have access to fresh fruit and vegetables, which goes down to politics.

It lets people think deeper about it.

Okay, why don't certain people have access to healthy fresh fruit and vegetables, and what can you do to make sure people do have that?

Making sure everyone has access to nutritious food is important to fight health issues like high blood pressure, diabetes, and anemia.

And because of the risks associated with anemia, researchers are trying to find easy ways to get more iron into people's diets, especially in communities of color that are hit the hardest.

The combination of socioeconomic, physiological, and health disparities are what contribute overall to Black women and girls struggling with anemia.

Do you have a sense of like how many research labs have tried to increase iron in plants and why so many of them are focusing on rice?

I think because rice is one of the most important staples in the world, and so if you can manipulate that in rice and manipulate other aspects of nutrition in rice, you can really impact people all across the world.

Introducing iron into a food as popular as rice could help people with anemia bump up their iron intake.

And this is just one example of how science can make plants more nutritious and make nutrients more accessible to everyone.

But in the end, what matters most is the people who eat it.

I just feel like food is like the easiest way to really get somebody to open up to you and to like teach them.

So I feel like if you're like meeting people basic needs, it's also easier for them to be open, to listen to like other things.

[bright upbeat music] Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.