The thing that strikes me is how fortunate we are to be well enough fed that we can worry about things like flavor and culture rather than simply trying not to starve to death. I imagine that people from past centuries would be astonished that there would ever be a time that abundance was viewed as being less important than variety. Glad we can now focus on those ancient grains -- but glad that the abundance of less exciting grains makes that possible.

FYI guys Lucas is not back. This was filmed before he left. For those who do not know he is now with LA TIMES newspaper the newly revised food section. Keep up with Lucas via either his Instagram staletwizzler or Twitter account.

Every time you selectively breed a plant for something, like larger or sweeter ears of corn, you run the risk of losing something else, often completely unrelated to the trait you're looking for. In some cases this can mean the plants lose resistance to disease, tolerance for harsh conditions, or even nutrition, etc. This has been done over and over many times to many of our modern strains of plants, which is why it's so incredibly important to keep the old strains alive. With genetic engineering, it could be possible to take the disease resistance (for example) of a robust ancient rice and apply it to a modern rice which most people would consider tastier. Frankly I'd like to try eating some of those ancient foods.

what an incredible business story, "we ugh, didnt monetize" "we serve 5000 restaurants now". absolute unit. That's the way to think folks

This is a wonderful series! Food anthropology is one of my favorite subjects. Thank you, Eater!

This was great, it makes me so sad what has happened around the globe to polyculture. The same thing happened to rice in korea, they had like 100 varieties of rice, and then the japanese enforced monoculture on their rice production killing most of those varieties. Such a culinary and cultural loss

I like the fact kept it real about Jim Crow.

Very nice to have Lucas back, enjoying this series.

Right from the start I knew that his video would make me just be like this is how much food affects culture and where people live. My goofy ass would want to try all kinds of foods and learn where they are from and how they came about. Supply and demand of a good product that is rare will drive people to open up to try new things and change things.

Good to see Lucas Peterson back. Lucas squad, rise up!!!!

This rice is amazing, I bought some a while back.

Rice came to North America via Africa. Rice came to Cuba via Spain. Southern planters went to Africa to get rice and rice farmers whom they thanked for their intellectual property and knowledge of rice culture by enslaving them.

Yay! Benson’s and Anson Mills finally getting that recognition 🙌🏼✨

Loving this series. Really informative.

Wow, what a serious and important video. Thanks to Lucas and the team, and Glenn Roberts!

Awesome, glad to see Lucas highlighting another wonderful company in the great state of SC. Anson Mills is a joy to work with and really do have incredible products.

I found Anson Mills when I was looking for a wheat flour that wasn't harvested using glyphosate. Pricey, yes, but quality and wholesomeness is priceless.

My mother in law's family used to toast white rice in chopped pecans or hickory nuts and then add yellow rice from the south (she said the proportions changed over time) and then add water or broth. She made a custard with the rice cooked in water. She talked about this about fifty years ago. back then, brown rice took at least an hour of boiling to make it palatable.

Lucas back with rice as subject really compelled me to watch & keep waiting eagerly for the next video. Cool subject!

People will complain that this rice is expensive. The video explains why. This is how rice should be. I live in SE Asia and rice is everything.

Great informative video. Now I'll try to find these varieties to eat.

They brush over the ecological value of planting a poly culture and these symbiotic plants. I'd guess they benefit from nitrifying bacteria, reducing the amount of nitrogen based fertilizer by a lot. Keeping the biomass in the earth is really imortant if you want to sustain a fertile farmland

Lucas videos two days in a row? We are blessed

Finally new Lucas Peterson content!!

Fascinating video. I never knew there was so much to know about rice.

This is historically in accurate in regards to this Rice. However it did NOT come from West Africa it came through Madagscar via Southeast Asian immigrants that mixed with Bantu speakers on the island. The West Africans domesticated Oryza Glabberima indigenous to the region. Extremely distinct. What happened what the early rice cultivating Africans enslaved brought Red Rices that broke when removing chaff and was a provision rice. It's extinct for the most part in the U.S. but former enslaved Americans who migrated to Tobago still grow it. It's related to African Rice's found in maroon gardens in Suriname. The Carolina gold rice came with slavers and traders that were in Madagascar that was put in the hands of skilled West Africans once back in the Carolinas. Or it came to the Carolinas via Barbados which 1. Had the largest proportion of enslaved Malagasy and 2. Was the foundation of South Carolina society and colonization. Ignoring the aspects of Malagasy contributions in the African cultures in the U.S. is wrong, especially because Malagasy descendants aware of their Malagasy roots still exist here and are all but forgotten other than in our families.

Been loving Anson Mills flour for years. It just makes insanely good home made bread. Gonna have to try out their rice at some point now.

Anyone who watched this video and was intrigued, should check out "the vault seed"

Omg yessssss your BACK!! MISSED YOU SO MUCH

Yay Lucas is back!

Fascinating, informative..!.

The Lucas legend continues

Lucas ! Been too long. Good to see you presenting again. :D

Lucas is BACKKKKKKKKK!!!!

I'm glad to see them working to preserve these grains. With so much happening now in the rice industry, and the low quality of proteins and nutrients no longer found in rice and wheats in america(and China introduced plastic rice of all things), we need this ingenuity to preserve the quality.

Lucaaaaas is back!

I liked this video so much, I went to your site and spent $54 on rice and corn.

LUCAS IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! couldn't believe my eyes

I would love to taste that rice. It looks yummy!

HELL YEA Love seeing something positive about my home city!

The scientist just dismissed Indian rice as "whatever they did there" lol.

Very happy.

I hope that sometime you can meet with Hawaiians and do a show about native taro (kalo). Issues here in the islands are similar to your rice feature.

Wow, that was so interesting! Would love to try those rare varieties.

Glad to see polyculture planting is getting more popular. Gabe Brown really inspired me to allow the weeds and see everything in the garden as a close knit community and everything has a purpose to serve, even the pest.

LUCAS!!

I felt like Sean Brock was about to jump in front of the camera at any second.

make the origins of different types of rice a series, please

the expert said that Carolina gold is from Asia, its not. Carolina Gold is Oryza glaberrima, a rice that was domesticated in West Africa which is why African slaves were knowledgeable about it.

There are 2 species of rice: Asian rice aka oryza sativa and African rice aka oryza glabirrema. Both species were domesticated independently on their respective continents thousands of years ago. Europeans found Africans growing vast fields of African rice in West Africa and brought 2 main types to the Americas: wetland types the main one which became known as Carolina Gold in the US South and was the major strain of commercial rice grown in the US for a couple centuries, and a dryland strain known as red bearded upland rice which is grown completely on dry land and hillsides. Thomas Jefferson imported a large cask of upland rice from Africa and distributed it to growers in the South hoping it could replace wetland rice in heavily mosquito prone areas, but because it required much more labour it did not catch on as a large commercial crop but was mostly grown by small farmers and as a subsistence crop mostly by slaves and free blacks. Asian rice strains only replaced African rice strains in the US during and after the Civil War. African red bearded upland rice was taken to the Caribbean island of Trinidad by runaway slaves from the US who had served in the British Royal Marines during the War Of 1812 and who were resettled on the island by the Brits after the war. That strain of rice is still grown commercially there and marketed under the name Moruga Hill Rice. Many African strains of rice are still grown all over Africa.

I'm certain he misspoke but Reconstruction was the term given to the set of federal programs and policies that sought to enable and improve the socioeconomic, sociopolitical lot of the newly freed slaves and freed communities. Reconstruction-era policies included universal public education and voting rights and repatriation for Confederate soldiers. Jim Crow was a reactionary response to Reconstruction and included inequal sharecropping programs, chain-gangs, and voting restrictions. These are not the same thing.

Watching this made me think of the argument for genetically modifying rice to have certain vitamins in it to potentially help people in third world countries with deficiencies. we may be able to get around this whole problem by having market around growing certain kind of rices that already had these kind of nutrients in them but have been kept off the market due to cheap imports which are also bad for the environment. possibly more than one solution both environmental, world health and possibly economics depending on who you have grow the rice could be established by going back to a more natural way of allowing rice to grow. this was a great video.

Culturally, he truly did the world a favor.

🌯Lucas is the Mr. Rogers of food 😜

I learn a lot. I think I can eat more delicious rice.

Just had a thought. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of sampling plant material from ancient mattresses to see about recovering ancient species either through preserved seeds or DNA.

Nice video 🥰

This makes me want to eat rice

Is your rice "polished", does it have its bran layers? I ask this because it looks so white. The bran layers give exceptional flavor.

I’ll watch anything staletwizzlers makes. Loved this story

I wonder if we could dedicate more land to these lower-yield, more delicious and nutritious grains if we dedicated less land to growing feed for livestock. I'd be happy to eat less meat if it meant my food ended up being tastier and healthier on the whole.

It was called the hot and hot fish club

Considering how much it costs to make they should try selling online as a specialty shop. People could buy them for parties & special dinners. Just to say hey this is an old world rice of such & such. It could come with an information packet as well. People would pay a real premium just for the experience. Especially if you sold sets that come with a variety of different rice. Or meal kits designed to bring out the best flavors of the rice. Seriously people would pay a lot more if it's a special one of a kind type experience.

Rice is very important to Vietnamese food no doubt, an as a die hard New Yorker, I am embarrassed to say that Vietnamese food in New York has nothing on the Vietnamese food in Houston. Perhaps it's the warmer climate in Houston that has drawn more Vietnamese immigrants to the fourth largest city of the U.S., which helps ensure a steady flow of great Vietnamese food among other stellar offerings of Asian cuisine as well. So come eat a few Vietnamese dishes with me. My apologies in advance to my Vietnamese friends for butchering the pronunciation of the restaurant names. Link: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pc1pg6Snxru4hn0.html

LUCASS

ow

And no Roundup in sight. Nice

Not to get on a soap box..but who else finds it funny that "they" want to use transgenic mutations to solve the ills of monoculture farming when these problems have already been worked out over centuries and centuries of hybridization and not narrowing everything down to 3, 2 or even 1 variety in the case if bananas. Who would of thunk it 💁

[How Eater messed up How]

corn in snow--I am confused..cant all corn sit in snow?

R I C E 🍚

Gotta fix the first word of the title. It’s How instead of ow

LUCASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

You need to re-train your cameraman. What is going on with the shaking camera view?! This was such a good interview and it's being ruined by your cameraman! I'm getting motion sick! Use a gimbal or tripod for goodness sake if you can hold that camera steady.

Great nutrition became secondary? Sadly so true

All the jobs in the world and this scientist was like. "Rice. I want to study rice." Like what?

*How

indica rice? sounds hella dank

Typo in the title!?

It would have been good if rice is taken in and delivered unpolished and protected from dangerous pesticide!

When americans call asians rice eater, little do they know, white people also eat rice everyday

wrong info

To the invisible ghost choking the professor, please stop.

Difficult to watch. Why does it seem like Lucas Peterson's having trouble forming sentences?

Wow an American eating rice often and not potatoes!

First?

"Rice was brought to India 4,500 years ago and hybridized with whatever the Indians were doing over there to produce indica". What a stupid statement, is this guy really a scientist, did anyone check his degree? If the Indians already had rice to hybridize with, don't you mean "japonica was brought to India 4,500 years ago" rather than "rice was brought to India 4,500 years ago"? How the hell could they hybridize japonica unless they already had a rice to hybridize with? We know that they were growing rice in India long before japonica arrived because we have actual rice kernels from the Indus Valley Civilization that predate japonica. So "whatever they were doing" was "growing rice". A more correct statement would be that when japonica arrived in India 4,500 years ago, Indians hybridized it with local varieties of rice that they had previously been growing, and the resulting hybrid had desirable traits so it became the dominant form of rice in India, and that is the origin of indica.

No. It tastes terrible.

Cuz he makes fake plastic rice in Vietnam

My iPhone Broke...can u lend me some rice so that my phone gets back to its original form

Soooo Because of Jim Crow & the Slave trade, I don't know anything about the history of my ancestors and we can't eat good rice anymore.

Geez! Get a professional cinematographer/film crew wtf the camera is so jerky. Do yourself a favor and buy a camera stand sheesh

10 lb of Carolina rice $69.90, 10 lb indian organic basmati rice 19.99!!!!!!!!!! Good Luck feeding a family rice 3 x a day at $69.90. Preserving rice for the rich and crap for the poor way to go and taking government money and research a long the way for free

Why do ppl like Lucas? He seems incredibly awkward and unfocused...

Caucasian viewpoint. Bad research.

This is just a terrible host,