Nutrition, Fiber & Vitamins In White Rice & Brown Rice

White rice is a refined, or milled, form of brown rice. The milling process removes the bran and germ from the rice, leaving the endosperm. The bran, or outer portion of a grain of rice, contains most of the fiber. The germ, or part of the grain from which new plants grow, is rich in nutrients. Even though enriched forms of white rice have vitamins and minerals added during the manufacturing process, you won't get the same nutrition as you would from eating brown rice.

Fiber

One cup of cooked medium-grain brown rice contains 3.5 g of fiber and has 218 calories. The same size serving of cooked, unenriched medium-grain white rice has virtually no fiber but delivers 242 calories. A 1 cup serving of cooked, enriched medium-grain white rice has 0.6 g of dietary fiber but still has the same 242 calories as the unenriched variety. The difference in fiber content between white and brown rice is obvious when you consider 1 cup of crude rice bran removed from brown rice has a whopping 24.8 g of dietary fiber.

Vitamins

The 1 cup serving of cooked brown rice delivers about 0.2 mg of thiamin, or more than five times as much as unenriched white rice. The brown rice has 3.5 times more niacin than the white rice, more than three times as much vitamin B6, twice as much folate and the same amount of pantothenic acid. The unenriched white rice has 0.3 mg of riboflavin, compared to 0.2 mg in brown rice. If you choose a 1 cup serving of enriched white rice, you'll get 50 percent more thiamin and riboflavin than in the brown rice serving, 1.3 times more niacin, and the same amount of pantothenic acid. Brown rice has three times as much vitamin B6 as enriched white rice. There's a huge difference in the folate content of the two forms of rice. White rice has 108 micrograms of folate, compared to only 8 micrograms in brown rice.

Other Nutrients

Brown rice is rich in essential nutrients, offering significantly more calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, zinc, copper and manganese than even the enriched variety of white rice. Enriched white rice, however, provides 2.7 times more iron than the brown rice. At 4.52 g of protein for a 1-cup serving of brown rice and 4.43 for either enriched or unenriched white rice, there's no significant difference in protein content.

Considerations

The average American eats only 14 g of dietary fiber daily, although recommendations range from 21 g a day for women over the age of 50 to 38 g daily for men under the age of 50. Children should eat 10 g a day plus an additional gram for each year of their ages. Brown rice provides almost six times as much fiber as enriched white rice, making it clearly the best choice for a fiber-rich diet. Brown rice offers more of most essential vitamins and minerals than even the enriched white rice. The exceptions are thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate and iron. MayoClinic.com recommends selecting whole-grain products such as brown rice over refined products like white rice whenever possible.