• In Asia, planting rice is often a back-breaking chore. Every seedling must be poked into the mud by hand—usually by women.
• Rice provides 25 to 85 percent of the calories in the daily diet of 2.7 billion Asians.
• If a rice plant is properly cared for, it can live 20 years, producing thousands of grains of rice each year.
• The three main types of rice are: short grain like Japanese rice, medium grain like brown rice, and long grain like basmati rice.
• 50% of all the world's rice is eaten within 8 miles of where it is grown.

• Rice and its by-products are used for making straw and rope, paper, wine, crackers, beer, cosmetics, packing material, and even toothpaste.
• Rice is used for a lot more than food! Rice straw is used to make coarse writing paper and is woven into sandals and hats.

• Throw in some uncooked grains into a vase along with soapy water and shake it all about. Vase becomes spotless.

• Toyota means bountiful rice field.

• RICE - an acronym for the treatment of sports injuries: Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.

• Books can be decorated with "rice marble," a technique created by placing dry grains of rice on the book covers when they're being made.

• Rice starch is sometimes used in the last rinse of a laundry wash, to stiffen tablecloths and napkins once they are ironed.

• According to Shinto belief, the Emperor of Japan is the living embodiment of the god of the ripened rice plant, Ninigo-no-mikoto.

• In China a typical greeting, instead of "How are you?" is "Have you had your rice today?". A greeting to which one is expected to always reply, "Yes".

Labels: genetic engineering, gmo, greenpeace, rice