Rice wedding

-- (Credit: Ajit Ninan)FACED with the daunting task of making Australia's meat-and-potatoes consumers switch to meat-and-rice, growers are hoping to exploit the recent royal wedding in Japan.

They have launched an advertising campaign urging Australian couples to adopt some of Japan's rice-related wedding rituals, especially the placing of white rice cakes in the honeymoon bedroom to ensure a male child and rubbing the bride's body with rice bran to encourage fertility.

The rice growers even suggest how best this could be done: "Couples will need two packets of Sunfarm rice bran and two packets of Sunfarm rice cakes." And, they add helpfully, the added cost would be only about $3.50.