Four years ago I visited Doti as part of a team of five health workers. On our first evening we ate together in a local hotel. When it was time to pay, we were surprised when the owner said that my bill was Rs 20 whereas the others all had to pay Rs 75. "They ate rice, you just had roti and tarkari," the owner explained.

On another health camp, five years ago in Accham, a pregnant woman complained that she had not eaten food for 15 days because in her condition it made her feel sick. But she didn't look as if she had eaten nothing for two weeks. When questioned further, she said: "Oh yes, I have been eating roti, vegetables and milk, but I have had no khana, so I'm worried that my child will be sick." She didn't believe me when I told her there was nothing wrong with her.

Since when did the word for 'food' in Nepali (khana) come to mean only rice? Nepalis have traditionally lived on a rich variety of staple crops. Rice, wheat, maize, millet, potatoes, buckwheat, oats and barley are grown in different areas according to climate and environment. But in recent decades these traditional foods have been replaced in many areas by a monoculture of rice, grown intensively in the Tarai and transported to the hills ('Speaking in tongues', #397).

White rice is not only less nutritious than all the other staples mentioned above, but it has also caused people to abandon their traditional crops. Subsequently, areas which were once self-sufficient in indigenous crops have now become dependent on rice aid from the government and international agencies.

Khum Raj Punjeli, then CDO of Achham, told me: "We used to have enough food for our population and even export wheat to other areas. But nobody grows wheat anymore. Rice is brought by mules and porters, and it's so expensive that now we are living in permanent food insecurity."

In the last 50 years, Nepalis have come to believe that rice is the only real food. It is partly due to the status associated with it. But it is also partly due to the government's policy of promoting rice as staple around the country, regardless of whether the climate and terrain were suitable or not.

A nurse in Accham once told me: "People here think that if they do not eat rice they will be weak. They only eat roti when they're fasting." Who has told these people these things? People were actually offended in Mustang when I asked them why they ate rice instead of tsampa. To them the question seemed like an insinuation that they were poor.

Neither the agriculture nor the health ministry has done anything to address the belief that staples other than rice are just for paupers, which is now doing serious harm to the economy and health of Nepal.

The policy of rice for all Nepalis may have been well-intentioned but it has not stamped out malnutrition in Nepal. If anything, people are more undernourished. At the same time a few people have got very rich off shipping rice from the Tarai to the hills.

In \'New Nepal\', it is time that we start thinking sensibly and practically about food, and leave behind the prejudices and profit mindset which have fuelled our irrational fixation on rice.