Brown Rice vs. White Rice

When it comes to rice there is white and there is brown and there’s this whole debate about which is healthier for you which is better for weight loss. There isn’t a problem with white rice. A lot of people think that diabetes is related to white rice, weight gain is related to white rice.

Phytic Acid in Brown Rice
Brown rice has the bran and fibre and it’s got nutrients as well like manganese, vitamins, minerals like phosphorus and iron. But let us also understand that brown rice has the bran which also contains phytates. Now phytic acid or phytates blocks mineral absorption in the human body. So the brown rice that you are eating is rich in phytic acid which can actually prevent the absorption of nutrients from the food you eat into your cells. The nutrition found in brown rice; is it really worth it if most of the other minerals from the food that you eat will not be absorbed into the human body.

Arsenic Poisoning in Brown Rice
Over the last few years there have been loads of traces of arsenic which is a heavy metal found in brown rice and it holds onto the bran of brown rice and it can be very toxic to the human body. So for many patients who have extreme cases of cancer they are advised not to actually eat brown rice but to move to white rice. Although if it’s organic brown rice or ethically grown brown rice which is devoid of arsenic then brown rice is definitely a good choice for them as well. Today soils are contaminated and your rice grows out of contaminated soils which are rich in heavy metals so it may be good to actually have white rice because the little nutrition that you find in brown rice cannot outweigh the arsenic which is a heavy metal which is toxic to your liver and the human body.

White Rice Tradition
If you look at Asian countries like China, Japan, Philippines and Thailand, white rice is consumed every single day and in some of these countries at every single meal; breakfast, lunch and dinner. These countries also have the lowest rate of diabetes because there is no connection with diabetes and white rice. But white rice when mixed with vegetables or lentils like in India white rice is served with lentils and vegetables it’s a great combination, there’s fibre and it’s a perfect carbohydrate. When you wash off the starch it actually makes it a light carbohydrate. Again you go back to traditional Indian wisdom, rice was always polished. Even the rice found in South India, its part boiled and slightly polish so it retains some of the white and some of the red.

Don’t Overeat White Rice
The thing is people struggling with weight tend to over eat rice. They tend to have more than their bodies require and they eat it at the wrong time like one hour before bed at night. Your dinner isn’t supposed to be the heaviest meal of the day and if you’re going to have that plate full of rice you’re definitely going to have weight problems. You don’t eat white rice and get diabetes you have metabolic syndrome, your poor lifestyle habit is what brings on diabetes and then over consumption of white rice will make your sugar levels go up and will make you eat more and you will have insulin issues.

Diversify Grain Choice
Also don’t get stuck with rice alone. There are other grains which are available which are extremely healthy like millets which are completely alkaline grains with a lot of fibre, protein, iron, phosphorus and other trace minerals. So explore different grains and make sure that you have about a variety of different grains in your diet because grains are required for you. Carbohydrates which are good are required for the human body.

So that’s how you decide between white rice and brown rice. So please don’t think that the white rice you’re eating is the reason that you’re not losing weight. We don’t lose weight because we have unbalanced nutrition and diet, inadequate and wrong kind of exercise, wrong amount of sleep, wrong quality of sleep and stress. We need to emotionally detoxify all the time. You get all of these working together and you have weight-loss. Don’t blame it on the white rice.