Is rice a healthy food? Is it too high in carbs? Does it contain arsenic?
Rice is known for being high in carbs, but it is a healthy food for most of us. Arsenic contamination is a serious problem, and even organic rice has not escaped this fate.
Rice is a healthy food for many people. One of the benefits of rice is that it is gluten free. In addition, it is a versatile product, it is widely used in cooking for the preparation of many dishes. Rice is a staple food throughout the world.
Most people eat white rice that has been processed to remove the outer husk (bran) and germ, which contain most of the vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
Brown rice has all the fiber, vitamins and minerals, and is different from white. Brown rice also takes longer to chew and is more satisfying than white rice. You don’t have to eat a lot of brown rice to feel full. White rice needs to be rinsed endlessly to get rid of the fluffy starch that makes white rice sticky, while in brown rice the starch is under the shell and doesn’t need to be washed many times.
The downside to brown rice is that its outer shell is quite tough and it takes a long time to cook – 45 minutes! This is too long for most people and is the main reason why white rice is so much more popular.
Using a pressure cooker cuts the cooking time in half, but you still have to wait another 10 minutes for the rice to reach the right condition. Brown rice is also known for being low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and for being a good source of selenium and manganese.
White rice is also a very good source of manganese and is low in saturated fat and cholesterol.
Brown rice contains about the same amount of calories and carbohydrates as white rice, and only one percent more protein. But it has a lot more vitamins and minerals. Is there too much carbs in rice? Carbohydrates are not bad. Overeating is bad. There is no such thing as “too many carbs,” but some people may need to reconsider the amount of food they eat, including rice.
Rice is rich in carbohydrates, which is why people all over the world eat so much rice. The body burns carbohydrates for energy, just as a car burns gasoline to keep the engine running and the wheels turning. Each of us needs a certain amount of carbohydrates, depending on our metabolism and our physical activity.
North American nutrition experts seem to agree that 1/2 cup of rice is a sufficient serving. People in countries such as China and India, where rice is the staple of their daily diet, can only laugh at these norms.
Is rice contaminated with arsenic? Arsenic pollution is a big problem. It is associated with the fact that the rice fields are flooded with water, which extracts arsenic from the soil. Rice has a higher concentration of arsenic than land-based crops. This issue has been around for a long time, but we’ve only recently learned about it.
Inorganic arsenic is found in 65 percent of rice products. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists this chemical as one of the 100 substances that are potent carcinogens. They are known to cause bladder, lung, skin, liver, kidney, and prostate cancer. Scary things!
Most brands of brown rice contain dangerous amounts of arsenic. But white rice is less contaminated. Processing rice removes the outer coating, where most of this substance is contained.
Organic rice is cleaner than non-organic rice because the soil it is grown on is less contaminated with arsenic.
But that’s not all. Arsenic is a heavy metal that tends to stay in the soil forever.
What to do? Brown rice is much more nutritious, but contains more arsenic. Our solution is to eat organic Indian basmati rice or organic California basmati rice, which have the lowest levels of arsenic contamination. And we eat less rice and more other whole grains like quinoa, millet, barley, corn and buckwheat.