Comment by littlestymaar

AFAIK vitamin A deficiency is a recent issue, due to the increased consumption of white rice at the expense of brown rice, which was the traditional way of eating rice for centuries (except among the elite, which had other sources of vitamin A thanks to a more diversified food supply than subsistence farmers).

Golden rice is yet another technological “solution” to a social problem, and unsurprisingly it's also failing for other social issues (fear of GMOs)…