"Opening the lid of her rice cooker, a luxury bought when power finally came to their village in central Myanmar three years ago, Tin Aye scooped out two fat ladles for breakfast. "I cannot go without eating rice. Since the start of the day, all my stomach asks for is rice," said the 52-year-old mother of three, laughing. Myanmar is a nation obsessed with rice. Its people eat an average of 155 kilograms a year, according to a 2016 survey by the country's rice federation and Yezin Agricultural University, ensuring Myanmar has one of the world's highest rates of rice consumption. For half a century, successive leaders anchored agriculture policies on rice. The government used loans, infrastructure, and services to push farmers to grow it and people to eat it, so rice is now woven into the fabric of daily life. In place of "Hello," people greet each other by asking, "Have you had rice?" It wasn't always this way in Myanmar, where diets were once seasonal, diverse - and much more healthy. But a rice-centric policy that began in the 1960s during the socialist era led people to grow and consume more, said Tin Htut Oo, who has worked in the agricultural ministry and chaired an advisory body to the government. "Our diets, especially in urban areas, are becoming like Western diets. It has become more monotonous," he said.,."