Brown Rice vs White Rice {Health}

[Source: hindu.com]

Which rice do you like: Brown or White? Two years back, when I actually came across brown rice, I had done some digging up on its benefits which you can read here. Since then, I have had brown rice on and off with the white rice. And, in the starting, I did really find it a little weird in taste and texture but slowly I got used to it and now I actually prefer brown over white.

What's Brown Rice?

For those who never had brown rice, it is the least processed rice and is brown in color. The reason is that the cover of the rice which is a fibre is not removed. That ensures that all its nutritional value is preserved when compared to white rice.

White rice undergoes a lot of processing and polishing which removes majority of its nutritional value and instead makes it harmful for consumption. Look at the figure for the comparison.

White Rice leads to Diabetes

“Higher consumption of white rice is associated with a significantly increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, especially in Asian (China and Japan) populations,” wrote the authors from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. White rice primarily contains starch, as the polishing removes most of the nutrients found in the bran such as insoluble fibre, magnesium, vitamins, and lignans (a group of chemical compounds acting as antioxidants). Insoluble fibre and magnesium, for instance, have been found to lower the risk of Type II diabetes. Unlike brown rice, polished rice has a high glycaemic index (an indicator of glucose-raising effect of a food) and is a major contributor of dietary glycaemic load. Higher dietary glycaemic load is generally associated with the increased risk of diabetes. Hence, the harmful effects of polishing are two-pronged — it removes the nutrients that would cut the risk of diabetes and at the same time pushes up the glycaemic index, thus increasing the risk of the disease. [Source]

So, do you like your rice white or brown?