How does white rice really compare against healthier alternatives?
Recently I wrote about breaking out of the rice-pasta-potato cycle, in order to increase the variety of foods in your diet, and as a result increase the nutritional value of your meals.
We all know that refined foods like white rice and white pasta are lower in nutritional content in comparison to their wholegrain counterparts. Switching to wholegrain varieties can therefore increase the nutritional density of your food. But what about also adding in other foods to replace these some of the time? Even a food that has lots of great nutrition is unlikely to have high amounts of the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals that you need. Therefore, mixing up your diet as much as possible is a great way to make sure you are covering all of your bases.
In order to demonstrate this, I have lined up white rice against brown rice as well as alternatives to rice: quinoa, millet and green lentils (values from nutritionvalue.org). I want to show you that firstly, there are much more nutritious alternatives to white rice, and secondly that different foods are superstars for different areas of nutrition - there is no one perfect food that will give you adequate amounts of everything that you need! Variety is the spice of life!
The comparison table I have put together has a lot to take in! Lets start by looking at the macronutrients…
Macronutrients
In terms of overall calories, white rice, brown rice, quinoa, millet and green lentils are fairly similar, but white rice does have the most out of them all. However it is not as simple as this - as white rice has by far lower fibre, this means that the sugar from the breakdown of the carbohydrates is absorbed faster into the blood stream resulting in spikes in blood sugar. This can then result in over-eating later when your blood sugar then crashes back down.
On the protein front, lentils are the clear winner with 9g per 100g, with quinoa coming in second place with 4.4g per 100g. But again, things are not so simple. We all know we need protein, but not all protein sources are equal. Protein is made up of amino acids. Some amino acids can be made in our bodies but others cannot be made and so must be obtained from the diet. Different plant-based foods contain different balances of these amino acids, so it is important to eat a variety of plant-based protein sources to make sure you are getting good amounts of all of the amino acids you need.
Micronutrients
Looking at the micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) almost across the board the alternatives to white rice have more vitamins and minerals, with some of the differences being huge such as 369mg potassium in green lentils compared to only 35mg in white rice, 181mcg folate in green lentils compared to 3mcg in white rice and 64mg magnesium in quinoa compared to 12mg in white rice. There are two exceptions: white rice is top of the leader board for selenium, and white rice is not bottom of the leaderboard for calcium, having 10 mg calcium in comparison to 3mg in brown rice, however quinoa and green lentils are at the top of the ranking with 17mg and 19mg respectively.
Take home message
You can see for yourself if you browse the table that in most respects there are better alternatives to white rice. But even more importantly, notice that there is no one clear winner. Green lentils do very well for protein, fibre, calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, folate and some of the other micros, but quinoa is the clear leader for magnesium and riboflavin, brown rice comes out on top for manganese, thiamine and niacin and even white rice wins for one category - selenium.
Eating a wide variety of foods provides us with a strong foundation for our nutrition and health.
In wellness
Fabia x
