On Rice

When we think of rice, we think of carbohydrates, Asian people, and maybe the adjectives ‘fluffy’ and ‘delicious‘. Sometimes, we’re more specific and we think about basmati, wild, brown, jasmine, and white rice. We might even recall the words ‘Enriched’ and ‘Extra Fancy’. What we fail to consider is where rice comes from and what happens to it after we inhale it.

Rice is grown in a lot of water and is the staple for much of Asia; millions of people in Asia manage to grow all the rice they eat, and there are tens of thousands of varieties of it. Some varieties are drought resistant, others can outpace rising flood waters, and others will leave you feeling full for the entire day. There’s an entire category called aromatic rice, which emits a sweet appetizing odor when it‘s still on the stalk or freshly cooked. Jasmine and basmati rice fall into this category. Despite this kind of diversity, we only grow a handful of varieties in the U.S., and most of us only ever know that rice as white rice.

White rice is what’s left after everything useful to your body has been stripped out. If we go by the glycemic index (GI), which measures how quickly an ingested food goes into your blood sugar compared to ingesting glucose (where pure glucose sits at a GI of 100), the only foods with GIs over 90 are white rice, sugar, white bread and potato without the skin.  That is, eating a bowl of white rice is, metabolically, like drinking a cup of sugar water. Consuming foods with a lower GI is important to maintaining your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar. And in general, high blood sugar levels can damage organs and tissues.

So then we might ask — what is rice before it becomes white rice? And is there any way to redeem this stomach-turning comparison of drinking sugar water (unless you enjoy sugar water, which would make this much less compelling)?

Coming off the stem, rice has five parts: the chaff (or husk), the bran, bran residue, endosperm, and germ. Five parts with different functions and a vast trove of nutrients, including vitamin B, vitamin E, phytosterols, unsaturated fats, and an entire dictionary of nutrients that researchers are still working to understand. Together, these five parts create a kind of wonder-food with carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and fat. It is, after all, a whole grain.

White rice happens when everything but the endosperm has been scraped off. That is, white rice is the waste product after your manufacturer has recovered rice bran oil, a product that is pitched as “rich in antioxidants, proteins, vitamins, and free of trans fats” and sells for $27 a gallon. Rice bran oil is also touted for containing nutrients that will prevent heart attacks and rejuvenate your skin. Sometimes, after removing all these nutrients, your manufacturer will also pretty up the waste product and “Enrich” it by brushing on a couple vitamins and talc powder, hence the warning to not wash the rice, the only step necessary to render white rice no different from pure sugar (my mother used to unknowingly wash all of this stuff off). So that’s what “Extra Fancy” and “Enriched” mean. “Extra Fancy” tells you that everything that is not white has been removed, and “Enriched” merely signals the addition of a couple Centrum tablets. White rice should be the poster child of good advertising and is probably to blame for the skyrocketing prevalence of diabetes in Asia — as people earn more money, they prefer white rice because it is prettier, and they are no wiser about the nutrients that are being removed. And high glycemic indices have been tied to higher rates of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

So what’s the alternative? Do other types of rice even exist and do they taste as delicious? Are they also pretty?

We’ll start with the least evil among the varieties of white rice: while the great majority of varieties of white rice turn into refined sugar once the four other parts of a rice grain are removed, basmati rice appears to be an exception. Most white rice sits at a glycemic index above 80. But basmati white rice has a glycemic index of 58, which makes it a medium-GI food and less likely to spike your blood sugar levels. Basmati rice is also famed as a delicious component of Indian food, especially in rice puddings (but the whole milk and sugar might balance out any of the added benefits) and as the complement of curries. If you’re going to choose a white rice to eat, basmati rice is a good bet.

Brown rice is rice that has only been husked and retains the bran and bran residue. Its GI is usually closer to 40 and 50, and boiling instead of steaming will raise this index. All rice varieties have a brown rice version, even medium and long grains. They have more flavor and may appear more yellow and white than brown. Fortunately, not all brown rice is the stubby variety that most people must acquire a taste for. If you’ve settled on a favorite white rice, it’s likely you’ll also enjoy its brown cousin.

But if you’re stuck on the white rice, parboiled is also a great option. Parboiled rice is rice that has been boiled while it is still a whole grain. It is estimated that 80% of the nutrients from the bran and bran residue then permeate the endosperm, so even when everything but the endosperm is stripped off, the resulting ‘white’ rice is still very healthy.

It’s interesting to note that white rice is more expensive than its less processed counterparts, even though processing has removed most of its nutritional value (and highly nutritious and expensive oil). Hopefully, however, this information encourages you to try other kinds of rice. While I was in the Indian villages, I was initially alarmed that people were consuming so much rice (easily 20 ounces of cooked rice per person, per meal), mostly because of what I had heard about the glycemic index of rice, but it turns out that a poor man’s rice can make up a part of a very healthy meal. Their rice, usually brown or parboiled, is the cheapest in the market. As India and China‘s growing middle-classes have shown, with rising incomes, there is a greater demand and higher price for white rice, as well as a higher diabetes rate.

It makes you wonder how much people really know about such a basic staple. I, myself, am pretty new to this information — just last week, my mother purchased two 10 lb bags of Extra Fancy and Enriched Long Grain Rice (thanks to Costco). After we work through these ones, I’ll be on the lookout for a good brown rice to add to the mix.

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