#raw rice

कच्चे चावल क्या हैं? कच्चे चावल को अनपका चावल कहा जाता है जो कि धान के पौधे से प्राप्त होता है। यह मुख्य रूप से अनाज की श्रेणी में आता है और अनेक प्रकारों में मौजूद होता है। कच्चे चावल को आमतौर पर पकाने से पहले उसकी परिष्कृत या भूसी हटाई जाती है, जो इसकी पौषण मूल्यों को प्रभावित करती है। कच्चे चावल कई प्रकार के होते हैं, जैसे कि सफेद चावल, भूरे चावल, बासमती चावल और जंगली चावल। सफेद चावल को उसके…

Raw Rice. Yay or Nay?

Work is the only known YouTube channel that has raised awareness against eating raw rice while aiming to make a living off of individuals who feel satisfied by the sound, sight or taste of raw rice. I got in touch with the channel's creator based in India to learn more on the topic.

How is your YouTube channel different from other channels that attract people in love with raw rice?

Work: My raw rice ASMR videos never show anybody eating raw rice unlike most other ASMR Youtubers who post videos of themselves eating raw rice, chalk, paper and all that. The audience of this niche is fascinated by the crunchy noises of chewing the raw rice more than anything else. But, if you watch my videos you will notice that I produce a similar sound effect without eating them. Mostly I stir the rice in a container. In fact, on my channel I have mentioned, "Don't eat raw rice. It's very harmful..." No matter how hard up I am, I will never ever promote eating raw rice despite all the requests I get from viewers asking me to show myself eating the raw rice.

Consumption of raw rice (ryzophagia) falls under raw starch addiction called amylophagy. It is recognised as a form of Pica. According to The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), Pica is the compulsive eating or craving of "non-nutritious" things. It's an eating disorder common among children, pregnant women, and people with certain mental illnesses like OCD.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), the self-reported tingling sensation arising on the scalp and travelling down the back of the neck and spinal cord, is a popular hashtag often used to promote videos portraying pica. When I search for "eating raw rice" on popular social media sites, I come across thousands of such videos, made mostly in South Asia, by both adults and minors. Sometimes content creators upload these videos to please the viewers from whom they get requests to eat a particular kind of rice in a certain way before the camera for their sensual satisfaction. Some vloggers film impoverished people of all ages devouring raw rice. Apparently, nobody finds anything wrong with this trend on the internet.

So your aim of creating the channel was to become a professional YouTuber?

Work: At first, yes. I created the channel in 2019. Then I got a job within a year. But I still continued to make the videos mostly in the hope of a side income, which I don't think will ever happen because I'll not eat raw rice for more engagement on my channel. I don't have any time to make videos these days.

Don't you think that your videos may also trigger the desire to eat raw rice in your sick viewers who are unable to cure their addiction?

Work: I did think of it. But my intention has been to motivate them to play with raw rice instead of eating it.

How did you discover the demand for raw rice videos on YouTube?

Work: Actually, I got addicted to eating washed uncooked rice when I was ten or eleven years old. Atleast five to eight times a day, I used to take a handful of raw rice from the container at home and eat them after washing them for a few seconds. When I was almost an adult, I fell ill after consuming wet raw rice for all those years. My education suffered greatly as a result of my illness. It took me over five years to recover from the unbearable physical distress I was going through. If I didn't have access to proper healthcare, I doubt I'd have survived. My doctors said that I got addicted to eating raw rice because of severe malnutrition from childhood. Towards the end of last decade, I randomly wanted to see if there were others like me who ate raw rice. That's when I discovered the hundreds of raw rice eaters on YouTube.

Nutritional deficiencies, child neglect, and low socio-economic status are some of the major causes of this disorder. There's a strong association of pica, especially amylophagy, with iron deficiency. If untreated, pica can lead to serious health problems depending on the substances eaten. Long term amylophagy can cause arsenic poisoning besides other disorders. But, the corporate heads don't consider banning the videos promoting the ingestion of nonfood substances on their respective platforms. Instead they place advertisements on those videos.

What countries did you get most of your views from?

Work: I never advertised my videos anywhere. I was kind of ashamed about what I was trying to do for a living. I only had an Instagram page with rice pictures. None of my friends or family knew about it. Most of the viewers were from India.

India ranked 107 out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022, below all the countries in South Asia except war-plagued Afghanistan. In 2021, the prevalence of undernourishment increased significantly in South Asia more than any other part of the world. Some of these malnourished people take to eating non-food items in search of minerals that their bodies lack. However, in countries like India the cost of mobile internet is cheaper than a healthy diet.

Below is the list of the countries, provided by YouTube, the videos on Work have got most of their views from.

How do you feel about YouTube profiting from your videos when you can't?

Work: I have deleted most of my videos on Work because of this reason. It seems impossible to have over 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours without eating raw rice like so many people have asked me to. It makes me angrier to think that people are destroying their health in the hope of earning a tiny percentage of the money YouTube is making money off of their dangerous videos. Even if these people spit out the raw rice after filming themselves chewing the grains, they are exposing themselves to so much dirt and chemicals.

Do you still crave raw rice?

Work: Yes. I don't eat raw rice anymore. But sometimes I uncontrollably watch the videos of other people munching on raw rice, and I end up making the billionaires win. I feel so guilty... But I also try to eat healthy foods within my budget to fight this horrible condition.