Ricism

My husband and I have been visiting quite a few Chinese restaurants lately on our date night, as it's much easier to find things that we will both eat on their menus. He can have his General Tso's Chicken, and I can have steamed veggies, quite often with tofu. Some places have a better selection than others, and some places definitely know how to do veggies better than others (how you can mess up steamed vegetables I don't know, but apparently you can...), but overall, it usually turns out okay.

The only down side to Chinese restaurants is that not too many of them have brown rice. I don't usually make a big deal out of this because it's just rice and date night is worth it to me to not necessarily have my ideal meal. But I did mention the other night to my husband that it would be nice if more places served brown rice. This prompted my husband to ask, "what's so wrong with white rice if 100 gazillion Chinese people eat it every day?" I answered authoritatively and without hesitation, "it's bleached."

Hm. I heard myself say it, then quickly thought my answer through. Was it bleached? I really didn't know why brown rice was supposed to be so much better for you. I had just lumped it in with all the other whole grains I was supposed to substitute for the bleached, processed grains.

So I did what I always do...I googled.

As it turns out, the extra processing involved to make the rice white does actually remove nutrients from the rice. The first step to processing all rice is to remove the outer husk. At that point - ta da! - brown rice. But then to make it white they have to remove the inner husk, and then they polish the rice wuth glucose or talc. This processing takes a lot of vitamins and minerals away, AND there's not nearly as much fiber left. (www.greenlivingtips.com)

So, I don't think that white rice is necessarily bad for you, but brown rice is a whole lot better. I won't throw a fit about it, but given the choice I will choose brown. Who can't use more fiber?