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I would like to talk about beriberi. Do you know about beriberi? Beriberi is one of diseases and it is known as 脚気 in Japanese. Beriberi is cause of short of vitamin B1 and at the worst, patients die. But now, few people suffer from beriberi because recent people get enough nutrients from everyday meals. However, in the past people didn’t know about vitamin, so many people, especially Japanese, suffered from beriberi and died due to unbalanced meals. Japanese people have eaten mainly white rice and haven’t eaten other thing, but white rice don’t contain vitamin B1 so Japanese people tend to suffer from beriberi. On the other hand, foreigners eat mainly bread and bread contain vitamin B1 ,so foreigners haven’t suffered from beriberi.

   From here, I’ll talk about beriberi in Japan.  Before Edo period, people ate mainly unpolished rice,  and unpolished rice contain vitamin B1 ,so few people suffered from beriberi. However, in the Edo period people got rich and ate mainly white rice. So beriberi spread rapidly and at that time, beriberi was called 江戸患い.  After that in Meiji period, Kanehiro Takagi found that the best way of curing beriberi is eating unpolished rice , but Ogai Mori and some doctors criticized this idea and the number of patients who suffer from beriberi was not decrease. Afterward Umetaro Suzuki found Orizanin and this was a concept of vitamin B1. Thanks to his finding, the number of the patients was decrease gradually. However, recently some people eat a lot of junk foods which don’t contain vitamin B1 and tend to suffer from beriberi. So far mentioned, beriberi is closely related to Japanese people and you should be more careful about beriberi.