1. Processing the Processes
When comparing brown rice to white rice, you'll find one very important difference--processing. Rice companies, in an effort to give the consumer what they want and not what their body needs, brought to market a product that was white, light and fluffy. That's great for your towels, but not so great for your food. Grains are much more nutritionally complete kept in their natural state and processed as little as possible. In fact, the most nutritionally complete rice is the one growing on the stalk in the field. If walking to the field and picking the grain off the stalk were possible in today's society, we'd be getting the most amino acids, vitamins and minerals from that grain. These processes may make your rice look white and fluffy, but the food that's left is nutritionally bankrupt. And do you really want your food going through the same bleaching process as your socks? That is why most rice companies enrich their rice, to put back some of what they took out. Also, if you read the package directions, if you rinse this rice you'll be rinsing off these applied nutrients, which are reapplied in the wrong amounts anyway.
2. Fiber Flop
Compare brown rice to white rice when looking at fiber and there is no comparison. The brown rice has literally 3 times the fiber of the white. This is because during the stripping and bleaching process the white rice gets all of the good stuff taken out. This includes the germ, which makes the new rice plant, and the bran, which is where the fiber is.
3. Load Up on Minerals
When looking at mineral content, you find there is a wealth of minerals encased in that little brown rice grain. While you do find more calcium and iron in enriched white rice than in brown rice, the brown is higher in every other mineral. You get gobs of magnesium, phosphorous and potassium, as well as more of 5 other minerals, including selenium, manganese and zinc. This all goes well if you serve your brown rice up with a main course or side dish naturally high in calcium and iron, such as spinach and broccoli. You of course could serve up a cheeseburger with the same characteristics, but you get a bunch of the bad fats that way. Try a main course with lean beef and a dark green leafy vegetable, and you have a nutritional powerhouse of a meal.
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