Enjoy the Rich Health Benefits from Your Plate of Rice

The health benefits of rice include its ability to provide fast and instant energy, good bowel movements, stabilized blood sugar levels, while also providing an essential source of vitamin B1 to human body. Other benefits include skin care, resistance to high blood pressure, dysentery and heart diseases. 

Rice is a fundamental food in many cultural cuisines around the world, and it is an important cereal crop that feeds more than half of the world’s population.

The various benefits of rice can be found in more than forty thousand varieties of this cereal that is available throughout the world. The two main categories are whole grain rice and white rice. Whole grain rice is not processed very much, so it is high in nutritional value, whereas white rice is processed so that the bran or outer covering is removed, leaving it with less nutritional value.

Rice can also be defined by the length of each grain. Indian or Chinese cuisines specialize in long grained rice, whereas western countries prefer short or medium length grains.

Health Benefits of Rice

Some of the health benefits of rice are explained below.

Great Source of Energy: Since rice is abundant in carbohydrates, it acts as fuel for the body and aids in the normal functioning of the brain.

Cholesterol Free: Eating rice is extremely beneficial for your health, simply because it does not contain harmful fats, cholesterol or sodium. It forms an integral part of balanced diet.

Blood Pressure Management: Rice is low in sodium, so it is considered one of the best foods for those suffering from high blood pressure and hypertension.

Cancer Prevention: Whole grain rice like brown rice is rich in insoluble fiber that can protect against many types of cancer. Many scientists and researchers believe that such insoluble fibers are vital for protecting the body against the development and metastasis of cancerous cells.

Skin Care: Medical experts say that powdered rice can be applied topically to cure certain skin ailments. On the Indian subcontinent, rice water is readily prescribed by ayurvedic practitioners as an effective ointment to cool off inflamed skin surfaces.

Alzheimer’s Disease: Brown rice is said to contain high levels of nutrients that stimulate the growth and activity of neurotransmitters, subsequently helping to prevent Alzheimer’s disease to a considerable extent.

Dysentery: The husk part of rice is considered to be an effective medicine to treat dysentery, and some people say that a three month old rice plant’s husks are said to have diuretic properties. Chinese people believe that rice considerably increases appetite, cures stomach ailments and reduces all digestive problems.

Rich in Vitamins: Rice is an excellent source of vitamins and minerals like niacin, vitamin D, calcium, fiber, iron, thiamine and riboflavin.

Cardiovascular Health: Rice bran oil is known to have antioxidant properties that promote cardiovascular strength by reducing cholesterol levels in the body.

Resistant Starch: Rice abounds in resistant starch, which reaches the bowel in undigested form. This type of starch stimulates the growth of useful bacteria that help with normal bowel movements.

Constipation: Rice can also prevent chronic constipation. The insoluble fiber from rice acts like a soft sponge that may be pushed through the intestinal tract quickly and easily. Brown rice and whole grains are well-known to be rich in insoluble fiber. However, it is advisable to drink lots of water for relieving your constipated condition, in addition to eating fibrous foods.

Diabetic patients should include brown rice rather than white rice, which contains low levels of glycemic index. As little as one cup of brown rice on a daily basis provides a person with almost 100% of their daily manganese requirement, which helps to produce energy from carbohydrates and protein. Brown rice is also extremely beneficial for normal functioning of the nervous system 

ionigeria.com

Rumble In The North By Gimba Kakanda

This title takes me back to the last years of 1990s, to those days we used to gather in our Big Man neighbour's living room for communal viewing of the movie "Rumble in the Bronx". We would laugh our hearts out at the stunts of Jackie Chan. The Bronx, he didn't know, being a visitor from Hong Kong, was a hub of street gangsters and standing in their way is a call for a “rumble”. Those movie gangsters of New York are just as dreadful as the religious gangsters of northern Nigeria to whom those of us who call for a cultural revolution are seen as pathetic deviants—they want to “rumble” with us today for standing in their gangster ways. I remember that movie from my late childhood today because I'm a stranger to this new world of religious extremism, being unaware of our differences in those days we used to enjoy our movies and laugh together. I remember this today because our reactions to sensitive issues of and around our region, religion and future are being done with our brains turned upside down. We had evolved from those innocent kids who marked both Christmas and Eid to sophist adult advocates of religious differences. We had lost what used to bind us: love. That community in that living room comprised Muslims and Christians, Hausa and Igbo, Musa and Moses, Minority and Majority... It was the symbolic representation of Nigeria in my childhood, one that remains in my dreams. Sadly, these days, I’m now learning to understand the way of our Islamist Bronx.

We used to be beautiful. We were a beautiful people until 1999 when an individual from faraway Zamfara State suddenly pioneered a political ideology that highlighted our differences; a flawed ideology that led to the deaths of thousands of Nigerians who engaged one another to contest the powers of their religions. We lost friends and families, many of them, innocent people, in those explosions of madness over the (il)legitimacy of shariah. Senator Ahmed Yerima, then the governor of that part of Nigeria urgently in need of developments, ought to be congratulated for introducing shariah legal system. Only that his was a joke to which laughter was, and still is, impossible. Introducing a system that exposes the poor to constant harassments of a taskforce charged with penalising "legally" recognised criminals and sinners while the major thieves of which Yarima himself is a member under-utilise public trust and misuse public funds is not only a crime against humanity, but an elitist oppression taken too far. The joke of our reality is that these leaders who play God in the name of politics, manipulating aspects of religion that portray them as defenders of faith, are uncritically embraced by the same people they cheat.

Yerima gets away with his tricks simply because he happens to a part of the country in which people are hoodwinked to see politics as sort of philanthropy, in which sentiments around religions and ethnicities and regions are stoked to gain political influence and in which possible resistances to their mismanagements of our resources have been smartly stopped by their ability to convince the people that they actually are just for Allah. Even when, in the name of the same Allah, they do nothing to redeem the destitute “Almajirai”—those products of institutional oppression whose oppressed nature is deliberately obscured by the false belief that they are getting an education, whereas the sociology of this century requires more for survivals and true representations of Islam; they build mansions in Abuja and Paris and London and Maryland and Dubai, while the same supporters are left to wither under the thatch roofs of mud-built houses; they rush to India and Germany on constant medical tourisms while ordinary malaria kills their supporters; and while their children are studying for a certain future at Red Brick, Ivy League and similar Euro-American-esque elite schools, their unschooled and unemployed supporters till depleted lands by hand at the countryside or rush to the cities to add to the sufferings of the urban dwellers. In fact, I believe that in the midst of the religious crises these gangster elite instigate, they flee to their castles overseas to laugh at our folly. All in the name of Allah.

The creators of this cycle of deceits and deliberate underdevelopments have taken care to also create a brand of robots that perfectly fit their intentions—countrymen who fail to see that Yerima’s latest move, calling for legalisation of underage girls as constitutional adults on grounds of marriage, is another cheap fraud aimed at establishing himself as the undeserved “Yeriman Musulunci”—Prince of Islam—which I gather is now his appellation. In our rash of debates, we failed to highlight that Yarima, who married an underage Egyptian, couldn’t do so in the bride's country because the law there has outlawed child marriage. And Egypt is over 80 % Muslim! Our abhorrence of child marriage is simply to redeem northern Nigeria whose fortunes have been destroyed by misrepresentations of Islam by these undesirable elements. If some western countries set low age for marriage, that’s because it poses no threat to their economy and healthcare. We are all stakeholders in this; the Ulama can never impose their consensus on us unless we’re consulted, not just because of the flexibility of this religious stipulation, but because we are what they are not: our backgrounds in the sciences are to be sought in the planning of a dependable society, where the benefits of medicine, pharmacy, aviation, computer science, geology, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, name it, are maximally utilised by Muslims. Every honest thinker knows that this Bronx of ours needs to implement policies to check our devastated human capital, and discouraging child marriage, yes, constitutionally, is one of these!
   
The least we want from Yerima is to not bellow the fire of religious tensions that have possessed us, especially the barely enlightened or illiterate northerners who lack the ability to see through his sophistries. This has been my frustration, I've been possessed by anger and disappointments in which the manner this man manages to hoodwink even the supposed intellectuals. I don't think God gave us brains, to understand and decide, for no reason. Yarima is a dangerous man; I lost two childhood friends in a crisis initiated by his political folly and I'll forever be emotional and unequivocal in these condemnations of any attempt at turning this potentially beautiful country into a fertile ground of fascist theocracy. We're trying to build a sane Arewa, and yet our people actually dance to this tune of exclusions. I do believe that stopping people like Yarima from making it to the front rows of Islamic advocacy is itself a form of Jihad. May God save us from us!
Saharareporters

Beer Cocktail Recipes: Drinks Made With Your Favorite Brew (PHOTOS)

If you've been drinking your beer straightfrom the bottle year after year, it's time you try something new. We understand the satisfaction that comes with a thirsty swig from an ice cold beer -- especially when it's a summer ale -- but we've also discovered just how great beer is for making drinks. Beer cocktails are even more refreshing than a regular beer.

Not only will beer cocktails keep you happy on a hot day, but they also make deciding what to drink just a little easier. When you can't make up your mind between beer or sangria, try beer sangria. If a bloody mary is what you need but a beer is what you crave, the beer bloody mary is what you should make. Beer cocktails are making the world a better place.

Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on Twitter,Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.



Beer Cocktails





1 of 12





The Beeroness





• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• Next

Fashola To Obi: Don’t Incite Igbos Against Lagos

Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, has warned his counterpart in Anambra State, Peter Obi, not to incite the Igbos against Lagos following the recent deportation of some Igbo destitute to Onitsha.

Fashola spoke with newsmen on Thursday after inspecting the ongoing light rail project and jetties in Mile 2 area of the state in southwest Nigeria.

The governor accused Obi of playing politics with the matter and using the media to blow the issue out of proportion, saying that the governor had not deemed it fit to call him on the issue, only for him to make it a media issue.

“There is too much at stake for anyone to begin to incite the Igbo community against their host state. There is too much at stake here. It is a very dangerous and unwarranted precedent.

And I hope that common sense will prevail here. Also, those who are praying for blood should know that there is too much at risk here. When I get a formal complaint from the government of Anambra State or notification from the Presidency, I will lay the facts bare.

It is unfortunate that my colleague governor has made this a media issue. As I speak, I haven’t received any telephone call or letter from him to complain and I don’t think that is the way government works. On less important matters like this, he had called me before,” he stated.

According to Fashola “this is a political season and Anambra will be up for contest and in a political season, unusual things happen and perhaps we are living in interesting times. And some of the evidence was when one sees two adults kissing on television, it tells you that some things are afoot.”

He added that it was regrettable to see issues of governance being tried on the pages of newspapers, with all sorts of columnists writing on it.

On Obi reporting him to the presidency on the issue, the governor said he was not aware if there was any place in the constitution that gave the president the power to adjudicate on disputes between states.

“Yes, I know that the president has a moral authority because he is the head of the sovereign state of the country. But I am not aware that the constitution states that the dispute between states should be settled by the Presidency.

If Anambra State has an issue on this matter, and they feel aggrieved, they should call or write to us. I feel that the final arbiter should be the court. And it is really important to say that our hospitality in Lagos State is legendary. And it is a global legend that the people of Lagos State are hospitable people and so is the present government of the state and previous administrations,” he said.

Fashola stated that there was a large Igbo community in the state and that their presence was evident in Alaba with the Alaba International Market and the ASPAMDA market, saying that they were doing their business peacefully while the state government was working tirelessly to provide the required transport system that would help improve the travel time and their businesses.

Naij

Game on: APC leaders visit IBB, hold closed-door meeting

by Isi Esene

Members of the newly formed All for Progressive Congress (APC) yesterday visited the former president, General Ibrahim Babangida at his Hilltop mansion in Minna, Niger state.

This is coming barely two days after its registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) after a protracted battle to be recognised as a political party.

Among the team who visited the former head-of-state was former Speaker, House of Representatives and now Deputy National Chairman of APC, Aminu Bello Masari; former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nasir El-Rufai, who is now the deputy national secretary of the new party; Senator Nafiu Ibrahim from Bauchi State and a woman leader.

The delegation arrived at Babangida’s residence at about 12:30pm on Thursday.

Read the Sun Newspapers report below:

The former leader, who received the visitors at the entrance to his office, later led them to his office where they had a closed door meeting. Security details of the former military president, however, advised journalists hanging around the house to excuse Babangida and his guests.

Earlier, while receiving the NECO Governing Board, the former leader urged Nigerians not to condemn the activities of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as related to the ongoing strike embarked upon by the union, saying that lecturers might have had the interest of the nation at heart.

“I think that they do have national interest at heart, but to be honest with you, I think they should not give up in their negotiation with the government and as much as possible, let the public understand the issue at stake.”

YNaija 

My Problem With Patience Jonathan - Governor Amaechi

Rivers State Gov. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi welcomes Rev James Aye Oruwori and other members of the Niger Delta Bishops conference

Rivers State Governor and Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum,  Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi said his perceived misunderstanding with the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan arose out of his desire to provide a conducive learning environment for the children of Okrika, home town of the First Lady
Amaechi said he has enormous respect for both President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience.
He spoke when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt on Friday as part of their efforts mediate in the political crisis in the state. The bishops had some weeks back visited the First Lady and Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike in Abuja as part of their efforts to resolve the issues
Amaechi said: “My lords, I don’t know what to say, believe me, the only thing I want to say to you is that and I want to be put on record that the wife of the President said when My wife came to beg me, I pushed her away. I have never quarrelled with my wife publicly, and I will never quarrel with my wife publicly. So there is no time I pushed my wife away, and there is no time I will push my wife away. I just want to correct that so that nobody goes away with the impression that somebody told my wife ‘go and talk to your husband, she came and I pushed her away’. No, that day I simply walked away into a bus and I sat down until they finished. So all I did was go back to the bus to enable my wife perform her official function of someone who had received the wife of the President and escort her to all the places she wanted to go to”.
“I hope that it (this mediation) will work. Niger Delta Monarchs came and no result came out of it and since you are men of God I hope that this one God will bless it. I hope so because that is the same way I spoke to them(the monarchs) and they said, ‘watch out, it will work’, and they never returned because it never worked. There are so many persons who had come to mediate but nothing came out of it. If it is peace that everybody wants, I am ready for peace. When you say you are seeking for permission, I am wondering why, because if you did not have the permission you would not have gone to see the wife of the President. The mere fact that you have seen the wife of the President means that you have initiated the peace move, so you don’t require any further approval than the approval of God that you have started with."
“There are aspects of the story that is public that I need to correct. lord Bishops please allow me correct those ones too because when you spoke with the wife of the President she spoke publicly. She said and I concede to her when she said she is my mother. As wife of the President who is the head of government and head of the nation, she is my mother and you expect that as my mother she should be able to protect her son. No mother takes away a Police Commissioner to the detriment of her son, so when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son.
“The other aspect is the Okrika story when she visited. Like I said, as the governor, by protocol I will receive the President and you know that the President is not just our President, he is the head of the nation but when the wife of the President came I went to receive her at the airport and she slept in Port Harcourt. The next day she came up with a programme that was not part of the official programme, and what was the programme? She wanted her people to receive her in Okrika. There was no plan, there was no protocol arrangement, nothing. We just had to quickly arrange protocol to take her to the place. But to do that we wanted to also show her, as part of her own programme, not our programme, was to show her the projects we had done in Okrika. So we took her to the Rufus Ada-George ring road in Okrika which we started and completed and then somewhere we saw a health centre and a primary school and I said stop, let me show her this health centre.We looked at the health centre and we were satisfied. At the primary school, there were houses around the primary school too close for comfort, no football field, no playground, no space at all around the school and I turned to the wife of the President and said ‘Your Excellency Ma, we have not finished with this building, we would buy the houses that are surrounding the primary school and demolish them’.
Once she heard the word 'demolish', the wife of the President flared up and took the microphone from me and started all sorts of diatribes that I won’t mention here for the respect i have for the office of the wife of the President. When she finished, I felt that it is wrong to confront the wife of the President publicly. When she finished, I withdrew and walked into the bus. When we got to the ground of the reception which was not part of our programme, which she just included by herself, I came down from the bus and went to sit in one of the primary schools. That is where she said my wife met me and I never and will never, there was not even a public, how did the wife of the President know that my wife met me and I pushed her away when she was supposed to be in a public ceremony. Was she standing with me and my wife in that primary school and saw me pushed my wife away? So it is important that you get to know this and it is important that the public knows that the altercation between myself and the wife of the President was as a result of providing services to her place, the Okrika people because you must deal with the issue of paedophiles. If you build a primary school and the place is surrounded by people who are cooking and selling and buying, that is not a conducive atmosphere for learning and we did not say we would come there with caterpillars and demolish, we say we would buy the houses from the people and pay them off to be able to get a football field and provide playground for the children and fence off the school so that we can protect them from paedophiles, that was what happened."
Governor Amaechi also spoke on the issue of Nyesom Wike, the Minister of State for Education whom he nominated for appointment as Minister.
“I hear you also visited Nyesom Wike. I try not to talk about Wike. I say so because he is my subordinate, I try not to talk about him but I hear you visited him. Why I won’t talk about him is that Nyesom Wike, his second tenure as Obio Akpor Council Chairman was by the grace of God but I was the architect of that second term. Nyesom Wike was appointed Chief of Staff by me. Nyesom Wike as a Minister of State, I nominated him. I was under pressure by the President to drop him, I refused. The President persuaded me to drop him and bring a woman but I refused. I hear he is going all over town saying I didn’t appoint him. I didn’t appoint him, the President appointed him but I nominated him to be a minister him as the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum. I did but you know, character doesn’t come easily, character is a very difficult thing and I am a man of character”, Amaechi said.
Earlier, the leader of the delegation, Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said they came because they needed the governor’s permission to intervene in the prolonged crisis in the state and the dispute between the governor and the First Lady.
They said they took the challenge to intervene in the crisis without external influence, having also visited First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, to restore the peace that existed in the state.
Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said: “On behalf of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum, we came to visit with you (Amaechi). We want to first of all appreciate your gracious approval of our coming. Summarily, to say why we are here, we, before I go into that, let me please say that our coming is not influenced by any person, our coming is not sponsored by any person but because in a home where there are fathers, peace is always maintained and because we have observed that there had been some challenges to the people of Rivers State then to the entire Nigeria, we feel agitated in our spirits.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that we have been praying but then prayer without faith is classified as dead and it is on this note we have taken upon ourselves to make a move to seek for peace. The scripture says precisely in Matthew 5:9 that ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God”.
“The best thing to do, we felt is to first of all come to you and to say we would want to intervene in this matter believing that there is nothing impossible with God. We just feel that if this matter is allowed to escalate, the matter is something that will not affect only we that are living but even our children that will be born tomorrow”
Saharareporters

INCREDIBLE: Woman saves suicidal husband by holding on to his BOXER SHORTS as he leaps out of window (PHOTOS)

A suicidal husband was saved after trying to leap from his bedroom window – when his wife grabbed him by his boxer shorts.

Witnesses say Ling Su clung on single handed for 20 minutes before police and firefighters arrived.

He was dangling from a six-storey apartment in Changchun, Jilin province, northern China.

A suicidal husband was saved when his wife grabbed him by his boxer shorts and held him there

The door to the apartment was locked, which stopped the emergency services reaching her quicker.

‘We heard a shout and screaming and there he was dangling from the window with his wife hanging onto his pants,’ said one passer by.

‘She got a stronger hold on his leg and screamed for help.

He was dangling from a six-storey apartment in Changchun, Jilin province, northern China

The woman was forced to get a stronger hold on her husband and had to wait 20 minutes before police or firefighters could get to him

Rescuers managed to pull 45-year-old Wang Li to safety, who is understood to have been depressed about a lack of work

‘We tried to get in to help her but the apartment was locked and we couldn’t break down the door,’they added.

Neighbours peered through windows to get a better look at the spectacle.

Rescuers managed to pull 45-year-old Wang Li to safety, who is understood to have been depressed about lack of work.

YNaija