Is brown rice healthier than white rice?
Eating healthy, these days, top the list of all and sundry. A simple statement that is doing around – brown rice is good, clean and healthy for the body while white rice is bad and unhealthy.
Brown rise has a different texture and taste, with a more chewy and nuttier flavour compared to their counterpart, white rice. However brown rice is not popular across the globe because it needs more time and fuel to cook making them unaffordable for a major population of the world that is poor and depends on rice for daily energy consumption.
Contrary to it, the bran in the brown rice might trigger digestive issues. In addition, the oil in the bran layer turns into rancid at the time of storage even at moderate temperatures. Here are some myths about white rice and brown rice in detail:
Brown rice contains low Glycaemic Index than white rice!
As per the most people, foods containing high GI are not good for health as they raise the blood sugar levels. The main problem related to the GI concept is that when you add fats, fibre and proteins to a portion of food, the Glycaemic Index value of the individual food is not taken into consideration.
It is often we add legumes, pulses and vegetables to it along with salads that normalises the blood sugar response and thus the concept of GI is not used, however, instead we calculate the Glycaemic Load on the entire meal.
Brown rice does not contain more protein and fibre than white rice
If we compare a ¼ dry serving of white and brown rice, there is no noticeable difference. The problem is that most buyers either do not understand what the label actually mean or never read labels and cry foul over small differences.
In this case, there is merely any difference in the carbs content. The fibre content that a lot of brown rice proponents flaunt about, is only 1-3gm and so is the case with protein that differs by only 1-2 gm. Contrary to it, the fat percentage present in brown rice is slightly more because of oil in the bran layer from which the rice bran oil is extracted. That is why a cup of long grain brown rice has high calories compared to the same quantity of long grain wild rice and white rice.
Brown rice has more micronutrients?
Well, No!!! Brown rice has its germ as well as bran intact thus the micronutrient content is slightly higher than white rice. Is that a happy news for the proponents of white rice? Not really.
First things first, the difference in brown and white rice is not much in terms of micronutrients and addition of a basic multivitamin would give many times the micronutrients that are found in brown rice.
Contrary to it, a fact that most are not aware of is that brown rice contains a substance known as Phytate, an anti-nutrient which minimizes the ability of the body needed to absorb the beneficial nutrients.
To conclude
To sum up, brown rice is not healthier than white rice. However, what matters the most is the total amount of rice you consume. Too much of black, red, brown or white rice, too much of carbohydrates is not good either. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And, if you are not aware of things then stop making assumptions. There are many athlete, including champions in several sports, for whom rice makes for a major source of energy. And of course, they win.
