Nutritional and Health Benefits of Rice

Rice is a grass seed of the species Oryza sativa (Asian rice) or less commonly Oryza glaberrima (African rice). As a cereal grain, it is the staple food most widely consumed by a large part of the world’s human population, particularly in Asia and Africa. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest production in the world after sugar cane and maize. Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population, and 90% of the world’s rice comes from Asia.

Types (Species) of Rice

Rice comes in different types (species), basically rice produce at different parts of the world have some variation. Below are the some of the most common types (species) of rice:

• Bomba Rice
• Arborio Rice
• Basmati Rice
• Black Rice
• Brown Rice
• Glutinous Rice
• Jasmine Rice
• Red Rice
• Sushi Rice
• Wild Rice

Bomba Rice

Bomba rice is a short-grain rice variety, mostly grown in the eastern part of Spain. It is widely used in paella and other dishes in Valencian cuisine and is sometimes referred to as Valencian rice. It has short grains because of the presence of amylopectin. Bomba rice is thought to have evolved from an Indian variety that was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle East. It is known for its non-stick properties due to its high amylose content. It is short grained and has a pearly white hue and a uniform consistency. One essential property of bomba is its ability to absorb two or three times its volume of water without bursting. As a result, more water is required to cook the bomba than other related types, and the rice grains appear to maintain their shape well after preparation. Bomba is one of the most expensive varieties of Spanish rice, particularly Denominación de Origen (D.O.) from Calasparra and Moratalla. Other well-known Bomba rice regions include Silla, Pego and Pals Rice.

Arborio Rice

Arborio rice is a short-grain Italian rice. It is named after the town of Arborio, in the Po Valley, which is located in the main Piedmont region of Italy. Arborio is also grown in Arkansas, California, and Missouri, USA. When cooked, the rounded grains are firm, creamy and chewy compared to other rice varieties owing to their higher amylopectin starch content. It has a good flavor and mixes well with other flavours. Arborio rice is mostly used to produce risotto; other appropriate varieties include Carnaroli, Maratelli, Baldo and Vialone Nano. Arborio rice is also widely used for rice pudding.

Basmati Rice

Basmati is a type of long, thin-grained aromatic rice that is traditionally grown in India and Pakistan. India accounted for 65% of foreign trade in basmati rice, while Pakistan accounted for the remaining 35%. Many countries use locally produced basmati rice crops; however, basmati is geographically limited to some areas of India and Pakistan. Basmati rice has a minimum average pre-cooked milled rice length of 6.61 mm and average pre-cooked milled rice width of up to 2 mm, among other parameters.

Black Rice

Black rice is a range of rice varieties of the genus Oryza sativa, some of which are glutinous rice. Black rice is also known as ‘Forbidden Rice’ in ancient China, since only those of the upper class could afford to consume it. Several varieties of black rice are available today. These include Indonesian black rice, Philippine balatinaw rice, and Thai jasmine black rice. Black rice is known as chak-hao in Manipur, where black rice desserts are served at the main feasts.

In Bangladesh, it is known as kalo dhaner chaal (black paddy rice) and used to make polao or rice desserts. The bran hull (outer layer) of black rice contains one of the highest amounts of anthocyanins present in food. Grain has a similar fiber content to brown rice and, like brown rice, has a moderate, nutty flavor. Black rice has a deep black color and it typically turns deep purple when boiled. Its dark purple color is largely due to its anthocyanin content, which is higher by weight than other colored grains. It is perfect for preparing porridge, dessert, traditional Chinese black rice cake, bread and noodles.

Brown Rice

Brown rice is a whole grain rice that has been removed from the inedible outer shell. Brown rice is a food often associated with a healthy diet. Considered as whole grain, brown rice is less processed than white rice, which has been removed from its hull, bran and germ. Brown rice is only removed from the hull, leaving the nutrient-packed bran and germ. As a result, brown rice retains the nutrients that are lacking in white rice, such as vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. However, owing to the growing prevalence of low-carbohydrate diets, many people avoid brown rice.

Glutinous Rice

Glutinous rice (also known as sticky rice, sweet rice or waxy rice) is a type of rice grown mainly in South-East and East Asia, North-Eastern India and Bhutan, which has opaque grains, very low amylose content and is particularly sticky when cooked. It is commonly used in Asia. It is called glutinous in the sense that it is gluten-like or sticky, and not gluten-containing (which it does not). While sometimes referred to as sticky rice, it differs from non-glutinous strains of Japonica rice, which also become sticky to a degree when cooked. There are a variety of glutinous rice cultivars, including Japonica, Indica and tropical Japonica varieties.

Glutinous rice is distinct from other types of rice by having little (or negligible) amylose and high levels of amylopectin (the two components of starch). Amylopectine is responsible for the sticky nature of glutinous rice. The discrepancy was attributed to a single mutation preferred by the farmers. Like all types of rice, gluten-free rice should not contain dietary gluten (i.e. does not contain gluten and gliadin) and should be suitable for gluten-free diets.

Glutinous rice can be used either milled or unmilled (that is, with the bran removed or not removed). Milled glutinous rice is white and fully opaque (unlike non-glutinous rice varieties, which are much more translucent when raw), while unmilled glutinous rice can have a purple or black hue. Black and purple glutinous rice are different varieties of white glutinous rice.

Jasmine Rice

Jasmine rice is a long-grain fragrant rice variety (also known as aromatic rice). Its smell, reminiscent of pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius) and popcorn, results from the natural production of aroma compounds by the rice plant, the most salient of which is 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline. These aroma compounds dissipate after a few months in typical packaging and storage. This sudden loss of aromatic quality causes many Southeast Asians and connoisseurs to choose the freshly harvested “new crop” of jasmine rice each year.

Jasmine rice is cultivated mostly in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and southern Vietnam. It is moist and soft when cooked, with a mildly sweet taste. The grains cling and are somewhat sticky when baked, but less sticky than the glutinous rice, since it has less amylopectin. It’s almost three times stickier than long-grain rice in the United States.

Red Rice

Red rice is a variety of rice colored red with anthocyanin content. It is usually eaten uncoated or partially hulled and has a red husk rather than a more common brown husk. Red rice has a nutty flavour. It has the best nutritious value in rice consumed with the germ preserved relative to polished rice. Red rice is a common favorite, especially among regular white rice eaters who are looking for a much healthier alternative. Red rice, after all, is one of the purest and richest of the essential nutrients needed by the body.

Sushi Rice

Sushi rice is a white Japanese short-grain rice that is cooked and mixed with vinegar, sugar and salt from the rice and then added to the sushi. It is known for its stickiness, but its characteristics are not the same as glutinous rice.

Wild Rice

Wild rice, also known as Canada’s rice, Indian rice and water oats, is the four varieties of grass that make up the genus Zizania and the grain that can be harvested from it. Grain has traditionally been harvested and consumed in North America and China; the grain is eaten less in China, where the stem of the plant is used as a vegetable. Although more widely known in English as wild rice, Manomin is not directly related to domesticated rice, the wild offspring of which are Asian O. Rifipogon and O. nivara. While they are close relatives, they all belong to the tribe of Oryzeae. Wild rice grains have a chewy outer sheath with a delicate inner grain that has a distinctly vegetal flavor.

Wild rice thrives in shallow water in small lakes and flowering streams; sometimes, only the flowering head of wild rice rises above the water. Grain is consumed by dabbling ducks and other marine species. Wild rice is more difficult to grow and harvest than real rice and has a harder texture, but it is a good source of protein, B vitamins, and lysine, an amino acid used in protein biosynthesis.

Historical Background (Origin) of Rice Cultivation

Oryza sativa was domesticated from the wild grass Oryza rufipogon some 10,000–14,000 years ago. The two major rice subspecies – indica (prevalent in tropical areas) and japonica (prevalent in subtropical and temperate regions of East Asia) – are not thought to have been derived from separate domestication cases. Other cultivated plants, O. Glaberrima, was domesticated in West Africa even later.

Latest genomic data suggests that all varieties of Asian rice, both indica and japonica, stem from a single domestication event that occurred 8.200–13.500 years ago in the Pearl River Valley region of China.

Extensive archeological evidence in China points to the middle Yangtze and upper Huai rivers as O’s two earliest sites. The country’s sativa cultivation. Rice and farming tools have been discovered dating back at least 8,000 years. Over the ensuing 2,000 years, agriculture spread down these rivers.

Movement to western India and south to Sri Lanka was also accomplished early on. Rice has been a major crop in Sri Lanka since 1000 B.C. The crop may well have been brought to Greece and the surrounding Mediterranean regions by the returning participants of Alexander the Great’s expedition to India about 344-324 B.C. From the center of Greece and Sicily, rice has steadily expanded across southern Europe and to a few areas in northern Africa.

As a result of the great European Era of Discovery, new territories to the west are available for exploitation. The cultivation of rice was brought to the New World by early European settlers. The Portuguese brought it to Brazil and the Spanish spread its cultivation to a number of locations in Central and South America. The first record for North America dates back to 1685, when the crop was grown on the coastal lowlands and islands of what is now South Carolina. It is believed that slaves from West Africa, transported to Carolina in the mid-18th century, have brought the sophisticated agricultural technologies needed to cultivate rice. Their labour then ensured a prosperous rice industry. By the 20th century, rice had been grown in the Sacramento Valley of California. The arrival to California corresponded nearly precisely to the timing of the first popular crop in New South Wales, Australia.

Regional development of rice cultivation

Asia

Based on archeological evidence, rice was thought to have been domesticated for the first time in the Yangtze River Valley region of China. Morphological analyses of rice phytoliths from the archeological site of Diaotonghuan clearly indicate the transition from the aggregation of wild rice to the production of domesticated rice. The large number of wild rice phytoliths at Diaotonghuan level, from 12,000–11,000 BP, suggests that the collection of wild rice was part of the local means of subsistence. Changes in the morphology of Diaotonghuan phytoliths from 10,000–8,000 BP indicate that the rice had been domesticated by this time. Soon afterwards, in Central China, the two main varieties of Indica and Japonica rice were grown. There was a massive expansion of rice cultivation into mainland Southeast Asia and westwards through India and Nepal in the late 3rd millennium BC.

Korean archaeologists announced in 2003 that they had found the oldest domesticated rice in the world. Their 15,000-year-old age contradicts the accepted opinion that rice cultivation originated around 12,000 years ago in China. These findings were met with considerable skepticism by academia, and the results and their publicity were cited as being motivated by a mixture of nationalist and regional interests. A joint effort by Stanford University, New York University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Purdue University in 2011 provided the strongest evidence yet, in the Yangtze Valley of China, that there is only one source of domesticated rice.

The early traces of grain in the Indian subcontinent have been found in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and date from 7000–6000 BC, while the earliest generally agreed date for cultivated rice is around 3000–2500 BC with finds in regions belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization. Perennial wild rice is still growing in Assam and Nepal. It seems to have appeared around 1400 BC in Southern India after its domestication in the northern plains. It extended to all the fertile alluvial plains watered by the rivers. Cultivation and cooking techniques are believed to have spread quickly to the west and, in medieval times, southern Europe saw the introduction of rice as a hearty crop.

O. Sativa was retrieved from a grave in Susa in Iran (dated to the 1st century AD) at one end of the ancient world, another rice domestication in South Asia.

Today, much of the rice produced comes from China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Japan. Asian farmers also account for 92% of the world’s overall rice supply.

Africa

African rice has been grown for 3500 years. Between 1500 and 800 BC, Oryza glaberrima migrated from its original base, the delta of the Niger River, to Senegal. However, it has never grown far from its initial location. It also declined in favor of the Asian species, which was introduced in East Africa at the beginning of the common era and spread westward. African rice enabled Africa to resolve the famine of 1203.

Rest of the world

Middle East

Rice has been grown in some areas of southern Iraq. With the rise of Islam, it moved north to Nisibin, the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and then beyond the Muslim world to the Volga Valley. In Egypt, rice is primarily cultivated in the Delta of the Nile. In Palestine, rice is cultivated in the Jordan Valley. Rice is also grown in Yemen.

Europe

The Moors introduced Asian rice to the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century. Records suggest that it has been grown in Valencia and Majorca. In Majorca, the production of rice seems to have ceased after the Christian invasion, but historians are not certain.

Muslim  also introduced rice to Sicily, where it was an important crop long before it was found in the plain of Pisa (1468) or in the Lombard plain (1475), where it was grown by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and was seen in his model farms.

After the 15th century, rice spread across Italy and then France, then spread to all continents during the period of European exploration. The Ottomans took rice to the Balkans.

Caribbean and Latin America

Rice is not native to the Americas, but was spread to Latin America and the Caribbean by European colonizers at an early date, with Spanish colonizers bringing Asian rice to Mexico in the 1520s at Veracruz and Portuguese and their African slaves introducing it to Colonial Brazil at around the same time. Latest scholarships say that enslaved Africans have played a significant role in the production of rice in the New World, and that African rice seems to be of significant early harvest. Varieties of rice and bean dishes that were a staple dish along the inhabitants of West Africa remained a staple among their descendants under slavery in the Spanish New World Colonies, Brazil and elsewhere in the Americas.

The native Americans in what is now the Eastern United States may have practiced widespread agriculture in the form of wild rice. (The reference to wild rice in the Americas is to the unrelated Zizania palustris.)

United States

Colonial South Carolina and Georgia have developed in the United States and have amassed great wealth from slave labour from the Senegambia region of West Africa and the coastal Sierra Leone. At the port of Charleston, where 40 per cent of all American slave shipments passed, slaves from that area of Africa carried the highest costs, in appreciation of their previous experience of rice production, which was used in many rice plantations around Georgetown, Charleston, and Savannah. From the enslaved Africans, plantation owners have learned how to dig the marshes and frequently flood the fields. The rice was first milled by hand with wooden paddles, then milled in sweet-grass baskets (the making of which was another skill brought by slaves from Africa). The invention of the rice mill improved the profitability of the grain, and the installation of water power to the mills by the millwright Jonathan Lucas in 1787 was another step forward. Rice culture in the southeastern U.S. became less profitable with the decline of slave labour during the American Civil War, and eventually died only after the turn of the 20th century.

Today, people can visit the only surviving rice plantation in South Carolina that still has its original winnowing barn and rice mill from the mid-19th century at the historic Mansfield plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The main rice strain in the Carolinas was from Africa and was known as ‘Carolina Gold.’ The cultivar has been maintained and there are recent efforts to reintroduce it as a commercially grown crop.

In the southern United States, rice has been cultivated in southern Arkansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas since the mid-19th century. Many Cajun farmers cultivated rice in wet marshes and low-lying prairies, where they could also farm crawfish while the fields were flooded. In recent years, rice production has increased in North America, especially in the Mississippi River Delta, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Rice production started in California after the California Gold Rush, when an estimated 40,000 Chinese workers immigrated to the state to cultivate small quantities of grain for their own consumption. However, industrial development started only in 1912 in the town of Richvale in the county of Butte. By 2006, California produced the second-largest rice crop in the United States, after Arkansas, with production concentrated in six counties north of Sacramento. Unlike the Mississippi Delta region, California production is dominated by short-and medium-grain Japonica varieties, including locally grown cultivars such as Calrose, which makes up as much as 85 per cent of the state crop.

More than 100 varieties of rice are commercially grown mainly in six states (Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and California) in the United States.⠀ The U.S. accounts for about 12 percent of the world’s rice trade. Much of the domestic use of U.S. rice is for direct food use (58%), while 16% is for each packaged food and alcohol. The remaining 10% were used in pet food.

Australia

Rice was one of the earliest crops cultivated in Australia by British pioneers with expertise of rice cultivation in the Americas and the subcontinent.

While attempts have been made to grow rice in the well-watered north of Australia for several years, they have continually failed due to inherent iron and manganese soil toxicity and pest destruction.

In the 1920s, it was seen as a potential irrigation crop on soils in the Murray-Darling Basin that were too heavy for the production of fruit and too infertile for wheat.

Due to the fact that irrigation water, despite the exceptionally low rainfall from temperate Australia, was (and remains) very inexpensive, over the following decades agricultural groups started growing rice. The Californian rice varieties were found to be ideal for the climate in the Riverina and the first Leeton mill was opened in 1951.

Even before Australia’s rice production dramatically surpassed local needs, rice exports to Japan have been a major source of foreign currency. Over-average rainfall from the 1950s to the mid-1990s stimulated the growth of the Riverina rice industry, but its prodigious use of water in a nearly waterless area started to draw the interest of environmental scientists. This was seriously impacted by the diminishing flow of the Snowy River and the lower Murray River.

While rice growing in Australia is highly lucrative due to low land prices, a number of recent years of intense drought have contributed to the disappearance of rice due to its impact on extremely vulnerable aquatic habitats. The Australian rice industry is rather opportunistic, with the area planted differing greatly from season to season depending on the water distribution in the Murray and Murrumbidgee irrigation regions. 

Nutritional Value (Composition) of Rice

Rice processing and uses

The harvested rice kernel, known as paddy or rough rice, is enclosed with a hull or husk. The milling normally eliminates both the hull and the bran layers of the kernel, and the glucose and talc coating is often added to give the kernel a shiny finish. Rice that is refined to extract only husks, called brown rice, contains about 8 per cent protein and minimal quantities of fat, and is a source of thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, iron and calcium. Rice that is milled to remove the bran is also referred to as white rice and is greatly reduced in nutrients. When white rice forms a big part of the diet, there is a chance of beriberi, a disease caused by thiamine and mineral deficiency. Parboiled white rice is specially processed before milling to preserve more of the nutrients, and fortified rice has additional iron and B vitamins.

The by-products of milling, including bran and rice polish (finely powdered bran and starch resulting from polishing), are often used as animal feed. Oil is derived from the bran for both nutritional and industrial purposes. Broken rice is used in the fermentation, distilling and manufacturing of starch and rice flour. Hulls are used for the manufacture of gasoline, packaging materials, industrial grinding, fertilizers and for the manufacture of an industrial chemical called furfural. The straw is used for feed, cattle bedding, toweling, mattresses, clothes, packing material and broomstows.

Health Benefits of Rice

Brown and white rice are the same grain, milled differently. The brown rice kernels have an intact bran layer. It was finished off in white rice. The inclusion of the bran layer makes brown rice more nutritious than white, even though some white rice is fortified. The bran layer also ensures the brown rice will take longer to cook. Choose brown rice for optimum nutrients. Some of the nutritional benefits of brown rice are as follows:

• Controls Diabetes
• Enhances Heart Health
• Reduction of Cancer Risk
• Improves Digestive Health

Controls Diabetes

Brown rice can help people with diabetes regulate their blood sugar levels. With a glycemic index of 64, white rice is more likely to increase in blood sugar than brown rice with a glycemic index of 55. Several studies have shown that a high consumption of white rice is associated with an elevated risk of diabetes.

Enhances Heart Health 

Whole grains such as brown rice produce more fibre than refined foods. Fiber can lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Fiber helps the person feel full which can make it easier to sustain a healthier weight. brown rice also includes vitamins and minerals that allow the blood to transport oxygen and perform other essential functions.

Reduction of Cancer Risk

Brown rice includes three distinct forms of phenolic, antioxidants that arise naturally in plants. Antioxidants can reduce the risk of cancer by keeping radicals away from dangerous cells. Phenolics are found in the bran layer of rice and in the germ, the reproductive component of the kernel. When the bran is extracted to produce white rice, a lot of phenols are lost.

Improves Digestive Health

Insoluble fiber facilitates daily bowel movements in brown rice. It can also suppress hemorrhoids and improve intestinal control. Since it’s gluten-free, brown rice is a healthy dietary alternative for people with celiac disease. Many with celiac disease are unable to eat some grains and will have trouble getting all the calories they need.