Brown Rice: Health Benefits & Nutrition Facts
Rice is a food staple and primary crop grown all over the world. There are several different types of rice — including long-grain basmati, black rice, white rice and sticky (or glutinous) rice — but in terms of health benefits, not all are created equal. Brown rice is one of the healthiest and most-studied types of rice.
Brown rice's health benefits are partially due to the way it is prepared, according to the George Mateljan Foundation for the World’s Healthiest Foods, which promotes the benefits of healthy eating. White rice was once brown rice, but the hull and bran around the kernel are removed to make it white. With brown rice, only the hull of the rice kernel is removed during preparation. This leaves most of the rice kernel’s nutrition value intact. Brown rice can be turned into white rice by removing and polishing more of the kernel — but with that process comes a loss in nutrients.
When brown rice becomes white rice, large quantities of B vitamins — including 90 percent of the B6 — half the manganese and phosphorus, more than half the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids are lost. White rice may be enriched with nutrients, but this process does not yield a food as healthy as the original. Nava Atlas, author of several vegetarian cookbooks, wrote on her website, VegKitchen, “Although white rice is fortified, it still doesn’t reach the minimum nutritional requirements for one serving of food as specified by the FDA.”