Photo: Elena Karelova / Flickr

Rice is a staple food for three billion people around the world – and most of them eat white rice. Rice comes in four main varieties: white, brown, long grain and short grain. Brown rice goes through little processing, with just the outer layer removed in milling. It’s high in fibre and has a low GI. White rice is the same thing, but more processed. Short grain rice has more starch, making it sticky, while long grain rice is fluffier. But which is best?

Brown rice benefits

Brown rice, being less processed than white rice, packs more nutrients. It has twice the magnesium white rice has, two and a half times the iron, four times the vitamin B1, three times the vitamin B3 and 10 times more vitamin B6. It also contains more fibre and more selenium, which can help prevent colon cancer.

Fibre-rich whole grains like brown rice can help with weight loss, and keeping the weight off, while it’s been found that white rice, being a high GI food, can contribute to not only weight gain, but type 2 diabetes, too. Fibre also helps reduce overall cholesterol levels and bad cholesterol in particular.

Brown rice, like other whole grains, contains phytonutrients that are released during digestion. They promote health in the same way fruit and vegetables do. One example of a helpful phytonutrient found in rice is the lignin enterolactone, which protects against breast and ovarian cancer.

What’s good about white rice?

White rice can safely be stored for much longer than brown rice, which is likely one of the reasons people first started milling it. The essential oils in brown rice go off within six to eight months, while white rice can last as long as 10 years.

Another benefit of the processing white rice goes through is that the protein it contains is more easily available to the body. This is very important in countries where rice is a staple, partly because rice isn’t very high in protein as it is. White rice is also very easy to digest, making it a good food for anyone with digestive problems.

If you’re healthy and rice isn’t a major part of your diet, brown rice is definitely best. If you eat rice very often, you may be better off eating white rice. As far as GI goes, brown basmati rice is the healthiest choice for steady blood sugar levels, while white basmati is better for you than other types of white rice.

Cooking white rice perfectly can be tricky, so if you want to be sure you’ll have fluffy, light rice every time you should definitely consider buying a rice steamer. Brown rice is much easier to cook, but it takes longer.

Tags: cooking, eating healthy, food