which provided an adequate food supply for large
populations. These have included corn in the Amer-
icas, wheat in the Near East and southern Europe
(Greece and Rome), and rice in China and India.
The use of rice spread rapidly from China, India,
andAfrica,andatthepresenttimeitisusedasa
principal food throughout the world. After the dis-
covery of the Americas, the use of rice took hold in
both continents. The national dish of Belize in Cen-
tral America, for example, is composed of rice and
beans. There are now hundreds of rice recipes, with
each ethnic cuisine having developed individual rec-
ipes. Almost all cookbooks have rice recipes, includ-
ing recipes for risottos and pilafs. Vegetarians, in
particular, cherish rice because it is such an excellent
food and can be prepared in so many different and
appetizing ways. Rice, delicious in itself, readily takes
on any flavor that is added. Long-grain rice, when
cooked, becomes separate and fluffy, while medium-
grain rice is somewhat chewier. Short-grain rice tends
to clump together and remains sticky with its starchy
sauce. Arborio is an example of a short-grained rice.
Wehani rice has a nutty flavor. Basmati rice (aro-
matic) is very popular, as is jasmine rice.
Description
Rice is the only subsistence crop grown in soil that
is poorly drained. It also requires no nitrogen fertilizer
because soil microbes in the rice roots fix nitrogen and
promote rice growth. Rice adapts itself to both wet-
lands and dry soil conditions.
Nutritional Properties
Rice is a high-carbohydrate food with 85% of the
energy from carbohydrate, 7% from fat, and 8% from
protein. However, rice also has a considerable amount
ofprotein, with an excellent spectrum of amino acids.
The protein quality of rice (66%) is higher than that of
whole wheat (53%) or corn (49%). Of the small amount
of fat in brown rice, much is polyunsaturated. White
rice is extremely low in fat content.
A cup of cooked rice has approximately 5 grams of
protein, which is sufficient for growth and mainte-
nance, provided that a person receives adequate calo-
ries to maintain body weight or to increase it, if full
growth has not yet occurred. Asiatic children for whom
rice is the chief food source have not developed protein
deficiency disorders such as kwashiorkor, as have
infants that are fed corn or cassava as a chief staple
after weaning. Growth and development are normal on
a rice diet. Due to its easy digestibility, rice is a good
transition food after the cessation of breast or formula
feeding.Rice and Thiamine Deficiency
In Asiatic populations, rice has been, and still is, a
main source of nutrition. Thiamine, or vitamin B 1 ,is
contained in the outer husk and coating of the rice
kernel. When the technology for polishing rice became
available, people took to eating white rice in prefer-
ence to brown rice, but that process removed thiamine,
causing beriberi, or thiamine deficiency, in many peo-
ple, as well as heart and nerve diseases.
Dutch physicians in Java and Japanese physicians
particularly noted the occurrence of beriberi with
edema, heart failure, neuropathy, and many deaths. Thi-
amine, of course, was an unknown substance at that
time. The history of rice is of interest in illustrating
how the technology to make a food more appetizing
(i.e., white rice versus brown rice) led to an epidemic of
a new disease for those populations whose food intake
was largely based upon rice. Studies by physicians in
Japan and in Indonesia led to a cure for beriberi that
included a more varied diet, plus the use of rice husks
and the outer coatings of rice, which contained thiamine.
Today, much of the rice consumed is either
enriched with thiamine or parboiled, which leads to
retention of thiamine in the matrix of the white rice
kernel. Beriberi, as a disease from the consumption of
white rice, is now rare if the rice is parboiled or
enriched. However, some varieties of polished (white)
rice may not be enriched with thiamine. Thus, when
thiamine intake from other food sources is limited,
thiamine deficiency could still occur. In the United
States, thiamine deficiency typically occurs in chronic
alcoholics.The nutritional composition of one cup of cooked riceBrown rice White rice
Calories 218 266
Protein (grams) 4.5 5.0
Carbohydrate (g) 45.8 58.6
Fiber (g) 3.5 0.5
Fat (g) 1.6 0.4
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (g) 0.6 0.1
Cholesterol (mg) 0 0
Thiamin (mg)* 0.20 0.34**
Vitamin A 0 0
*Daily requirement of thiamin is 1.2 mg for an adult man
**Enriched or parboiled rice(Illustration by GGS Information Services/Thomson Gale.)
Rice-based diets