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The Brown Rice Con and How To Upgrade White Rice
The Brown Rice Con and How To Upgrade White Rice

For over 15 years, I have been informing good people, through articles, lectures and one-on-one consultations, about a set of revelatory dietary insights I collectively coined “The Truth About Nutrition”. Now, there are different components to this understanding, but one of the axiomatic components is that foods contain nutrients and anti-nutrients. If you want to understand food and nutrition, you necessarily have to understand both. To review: many raw, unprocessed (or minimally processed) wholefoods (which are not limited to just plants) are laced with anti-nutrients and toxins, the regular consumption of which can seriously retard our capacity to be ‘fed by our food’. Indeed, the eating of certain unprocessed wholefoods imparts more than just an everyday threat to our nutrient levels. As Gaia theory proponent James Lovelock alludes, it “is surprising how few seem aware that plants [generally speaking] dislike being eaten and will go to extraordinary lengths to deter, disable or even kill any animal or invertebrate trying to eat them” (Lovelock: 2006). In regards to humans, commonly consumed anti-nutrients and toxins, whether from plant, mushroom, or even animal, can disrupt digestion, suppress and alter hormone output, damage sensitive gastrointestinal tracts, contribute to infertility, cause chronic fatigue, arthritis and other inflammatory conditions, thyroid disease, severely compromise the immune system, cause osteoporosis, inhibit general growth and wound healing, create kidney stones, or cause susceptibility to general infection. Food sources of anti-nutrients and toxins are also secretly implicated in a broad spectrum of non-localised debilities, leaving hundreds of millions sick, tired, confused, and sometimes, stark raving mad.

Would it surprise you to know that the modern wholefood diet (as it is typically construed and practiced), famously adopted and employed by raw-foodists, vegans, vegetarians and omnivores of many persuasions, is actually a recent invention? In considerable part, the modern wholefood diet was borne of a reaction, a counter culture, to the burgeoning popularity of “big food” and his overly-manufactured cuisine. Une résistance culinaire which gained tremendous popularity in the late 1960, 70s and onwards in the ‘West'. For a while, eating brown rice and eschewing refined rice became an almost quintessential motif of this revolution, and yet, the height of its popularity occurred in regions far away from the wet, verdant paddy fields. This last point is significant, because in our swiftness to denounce the new and insufficient, not only did we ignore many of the enlightening threads of our culinary heritage - the hard won nutritional insights colloquially held in the practices of our ancestors, we also did the same with the wisdom collected by hundreds of years of rice growing cultures too. Survey the rice eating world dear friend, very few communities are eating brown rice. All across Asia, for hundreds of years, by prudent peoples, white rice is consumed, sometimes at every meal - breakfast, lunch and dinner. Indeed, the more reliant a community is on the sustenance-giving properties of rice, the less likely they would be eating it brown. It is neither a smart survival instinct, nor a metabolically efficient method of energy extraction; to put the body though the rigmarole of trying to extract the goodness from brown rice, when the energetic demands of the day are already very significant. White rice is a simple, easily digested, easily tolerated energy staple eaten routinely across many blue zones and longevity hotspots. Read on to learn why this is so.

In nature, protease inhibitors – anti-nutrients that interfere with the digestion and thus the availability of dietary protein are, curiously enough, often distributed among those very plant foods that yield, “on paper”, good levels of protein. Similarly, wherever useful levels of calcium concentrate within the plant kingdom, it is often found in conjunction with a variety of anti-nutrients such as oxalic acid (oxalates) that can make the dietary uptake of that calcium problematic. One of the potential deceptions we must navigate as students of nutrition are the food-mineral charts, wherein specific foods are whitelisted or blacklisted in lieu of their mineral analysis results. For example, poppy seeds may come up trumps on such charts for being one of the highest sources of zinc, spinach or spring greens may win an award for being an excellent source of calcium, whilst soya might be labeled a “Gold medal winner” for its high protein content. Yet, in all these cited cases and hundreds besides, we are being misled (sometimes, dangerously so), for an awareness of the mineral content of a foodstuff is not yet to know its quality or superiority as a source of that mineral. A simple nutrient count in milligrams (or micrograms) does not imply the actual bio-availability of the given nutrient. Nor does it say anything about the biochemical interactions between the minerals and anti-nutrients present. Though this article will be honing in on the world’s most widely consumed food, rice, the central points made can apply pretty interchangeably with the staple foodstuffs of the modern wholefood diet, i.e, botanical seeds of all varieties, be they grain, bean, nut or seed. The fundamental point, as you will soon learn, is pithily exclaimed by my author friend Clive Lawler: “whole don’t necessarily mean wholesome!”. 

Just quickly though, by “brown rice” I mean any wholefood, unpolished rice. The fact is different varieties of rice can be red, burgundy, black, purple, golden brown, creamy brown and other shades besides. So for brevity I will continue to use “brown rice” to represent all wholefood rice types. Yes, there will be natural variations across the rice family, but the general argument will remain the same. Let us now proceed to the meat of the matter. 

Brown rice is high in the anti-nutrient phytic acid (commonly called phytate), which forms “robbing” complexes with some of the essential minerals in the rice. Phytic acid is naturally present within whole grains, nuts and seeds where they operate as phosphorus stores for the seed (and its future intention for germination). White rice on the other hand, because it has had the principle anti-nutrient stores removed in the form of the bran and the germ, are low in anti-nutrients. As a result, and this may surprise many people, for many nutrient data points white rice yields a cleaner net gain of nutrients than does brown rice. You see, phytic acid is capable of binding up many times its weight in essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, zinc copper, potassium and iron. Even an amount of phytic acid as low as 50 mg per 100 grams of rice, is capable (particularly in sensitive individuals) of significantly interfering with the obtainability of these positive organic minerals, rendering them relatively insoluble during intestinal transit. For example, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that a phytic acid intake of only 4-9mg per 100g is capable of decreasing the absorption of iron by 4-5 times in humans. Excessive consumption of brown rice (for some that could be a dose of only 20 grams) has been shown to cause indigestion, discomfort, bloating, bowel irritation and flatulence, in a high percentage of people. This is because phytic acid also has the capacity to bind up digestive enzymes such as amylase, trypsin and peptin, in the body. 

Brown rice consumption has been shown to rob calcium and magnesium ions, considerably more than than white rice does. Thus, although white rice does not contain as much calcium and magnesium “on paper”, it does not chelate or bind-up those minerals as they pass through the digestive tract, anywhere near to the same degree. Brown rice consumption has been shown to impair our net gain of phosphorus to the point that white rice is a greater source. Brown rice consumption has been shown to bind up the bodies own niacin (vitamin B3), a deficiency of which causes the condition pellagra, to the point that white rice is a better source of the vitamin.

One thing to remember in regards to brown rice, is that brown rice literally contains within it, white rice. Just as the less palatable outer layers of the açaí or peach palm are stripped away to access the calorically valued inner “meat” known as ‘heart of palm’, white rice has merely been revealed, not concocted. Firstly the rice is harvested from the field, then it is dried. Then the dried whole seed is dehusked to remove the soft dry papery outer husk to reveal brown rice as we know it. For the final “reveal” the rice then goes through a milling process to remove most of the problematic bran and germ. But what about the lost fibre? Well, for most people, that is is actually a good thing. The reason why so many people worldwide do not tolerate brown rice very well is actually because of its high insoluble fibre content (aka resistant starch), which can be upwards of 85% of its total fibre content. Within minutes of brown rice consumption, many folks commonly complain of bloating, “the food just sitting there”, indigestion, fatigue, and due to the excess fibre not going anywhere very fast, and swelling-up in transit, - constipation is common too. On top of that, fibre itself often functions much like an anti-nutrient, blocking and binding with essential nutrients that the body requires, and further problematising their absorption. In addition to the important reduction in fibre, the small amount of very sensitive polyunsaturated-rich oils found in brown rice and other members of the grass family, are removed. While there may be health benefits to be had from pressing the oil from freshly harvested ripe rice grains and then freezing or refrigerating those oils immediately to preserve their extremely sensitive integrity, just having those oils go rancid on the dried grain, and then eventually cooking those oils (months or years later) in boiling water will further create free-radical damage within the oil and therefore, in your final dish.

Another factor to bear in mind with white rice, or any other ingredient you might utilise regularly, concerns the broader dietary context that rice is operating within. That is exceedingly posh lingo for: what are you cooking it with and what are you eating with it? Are you typically cooking it in broth, or with herbs, spices and vegetables, maybe some saturated fat? Do you eat your rice alongside cheese, pumpkin seeds, roasted fennel and onion or clean animal protein. The point being, white rice is often not eaten, naked, all by itself. So while you could pine for the potential lost nutrients in white rice, it makes more sense to focus on adding that additional value back again, preferably using high-quality, delicious ingredients that are low (or lower) in anti-nutrients and toxins.

If you are concerned on any level about certain missing factors in white rice compared to brown rice, here is the solution you need. Cook your white rice in oat straw tea. Oat straw is the green grass of the oat plant. Both oats and rice are members of the same family, i.e, the grass family. The green grass itself is naturally very low in anti-nutrients and yields important essential minerals, like magnesium, calcium, iron, silica and manganese, important bone and tissue builders, some of which will have been removed in the polishing of brown rice into white rice. Even though white rice actually provides a larger net gain of nutrients across the board, after the nutrient vs anti-nutrient calculations have been made, this is a wonderful and effective way to increase the nutrient value of white rice further with some important alkalising and bone building features. Bamboo leaf tea (bamboo is also a member of the very same grass family) is also a good alternative if you have access to a reliable source, as is rice grass if you live in an area where rice is growing and you can be assured of its organic quality. In short, we are bringing the seed and the grass together to achieve maximal nutritional balance and readdress any shortfalls. The other important benefit of oat grass/straw tea and bamboo leaf tea is that, as a liquid, it is a mild, pleasant, yet innocuous medium for cooking rice or other seeds in. Simply simmer 10-15g of oat grass/straw or bamboo leaf in 1 litre of pure water, with the pan lid on, for 10-15 minutes. Let sit for 10 mins and pour the necessary amount into your saucepan for rice cooking or else decant into a clean glass bottle and refrigerate for use over the coming days. As per the making of any nutritive herbal teas, soaking herbs overnight in a saucepan, before simmering the next day, further increases the extraction of the minerals into the water, especially when the water is initially heated so that the herbs are soaking in warmer water overnight. For the highest organic quality, nutritious oat straw SEE HERE.

Kyle Vialli (2024)

Artwork (at very top): Painting "Harvest Time in the Golden Fields" by Reggy Renaldi


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