UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 85 of 150

Correct — A, Beriberi. Milling and polishing strip the bran and germ off the rice grain, and it is precisely those outer layers that hold most of the grain's thiamine (Vitamin B1); the starchy endosperm left behind is nearly thiamine-free. A diet built around polished white rice with few other B1 sources therefore produces chronic thiamine deficiency, whose classical clinical form is beriberi. It appears in two patterns — 'wet' beriberi, which attacks the cardiovascular system and causes oedema and high-output heart failure, and 'dry' beriberi, which damages peripheral nerves and causes tingling, weakness and wasting of the limbs; infantile beriberi occurs in breastfed babies of thiamine-deficient mothers. This is one of the oldest established nutrition links in medicine: Christiaan Eijkman showed in the 1890s that fowls fed polished rice developed a polyneuritis that was cured by the discarded bran, work that led to the concept of vitamins and to his Nobel Prize in 1929.

• (b)Goitre — Goitre — visible enlargement of the thyroid gland — is caused by iodine deficiency, not by any vitamin. Iodine is a mineral supplied mainly by iodised salt, seafood and soils; it has nothing to do with how a rice grain is milled. India's response to it was universal salt iodisation, not rice policy.
• (c)Night blindness — Night blindness is the earliest sign of Vitamin A (retinol) deficiency: without retinol the rod cells of the retina cannot make enough rhodopsin to see in dim light, and severe deficiency progresses to xerophthalmia. It is a real diet-linked disease, which is why it sits here, but it is the wrong vitamin — A, not B1.
• (d)Colour blindness — Colour blindness is not a nutritional disorder at all. It is an inherited X-linked recessive condition affecting the cone pigments — which is why it is far commoner in males — and no change of diet causes it or cures it. It is the odd one out and can be eliminated on principle before any vitamin is recalled.

A rice grain has three edible parts: the fibrous bran coat, the nutrient-dense germ, and the starchy endosperm. Milling removes bran and germ to give white rice that stores longer and cooks whiter, but it takes away most of the grain's thiamine, other B vitamins, minerals and fat. Thiamine is a water-soluble vitamin the body stores only in small amounts, so a deficient diet shows up in weeks to months. It works as the coenzyme thiamine pyrophosphate in carbohydrate metabolism, which is why the tissues that fail first are the ones most dependent on steady glucose oxidation — heart and nerve. Thiamine deficiency also underlies Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, seen chiefly with chronic alcohol use.

Two routes get you to the answer. The knowledge route is the standard nutrient-to-disease table: B1 to beriberi, iodine to goitre, Vitamin A to night blindness. The elimination route is faster under time pressure — colour blindness is genetic, so it cannot be a dietary consequence at all, and goitre is a mineral deficiency, leaving two vitamin diseases, of which only beriberi belongs to the B group that rice bran carries. Two practical footnotes worth remembering: parboiling rice before milling drives water-soluble vitamins from the bran into the endosperm, so parboiled rice retains far more thiamine than ordinary polished rice, and beriberi historically appeared in exactly those Asian populations where steam-powered mills replaced hand-pounding of rice.

• Thiamine (Vitamin B1) sits mainly in the bran and germ of the rice grain, which milling and polishing remove.
• Thiamine deficiency causes beriberi — 'wet' beriberi affecting the heart and circulation, 'dry' beriberi affecting peripheral nerves.
• Goitre is caused by iodine deficiency and night blindness by Vitamin A deficiency; colour blindness is an inherited X-linked condition, not a deficiency disease.
• Parboiling rice before milling drives thiamine into the endosperm, so parboiled rice retains much more of the vitamin than ordinary polished rice.
• Christiaan Eijkman's polished-rice experiments on fowls in the 1890s opened the path to the discovery of vitamins; he received the Nobel Prize in 1929.

• Pairing polished rice with any vitamin deficiency rather than specifically thiamine — the classic slip is to answer night blindness because it is the deficiency disease most often revised.
• Treating goitre as a vitamin problem; it is an iodine (mineral) deficiency.
• Overlooking that colour blindness is genetic — an option that can be struck out without recalling a single nutrient fact.

UPPSC repeats this item almost verbatim across cycles as a straight one-liner or a NOT-correctly-matched pair, while UPSC prefers multi-statement or matching formats that mix vitamins with minerals and slip in one wrong pairing — so memorise the nutrient-to-disease table both ways, disease from nutrient and nutrient from disease.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which part of the rice grain, removed during polishing, contains most of its thiamine?

  • (a)The endosperm
  • (b)The bran and germ
  • (c)The husk only
  • (d)The starch granules

  Answer(b) The bran and germ — the outer coat and embryo carry most of the grain's Vitamin B1, minerals and fat; the endosperm left behind is largely starch.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs is NOT correctly matched?

  • (a)Vitamin B1 deficiency — Beriberi
  • (b)Iodine deficiency — Goitre
  • (c)Vitamin A deficiency — Night blindness
  • (d)Vitamin C deficiency — Rickets

  Answer(d) Vitamin C deficiency — Rickets is the mismatch: Vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, while rickets is caused by Vitamin D deficiency.