instant rice vs. "regular"
 

as a recent college graduate, i'm a disciple of the "10-minute" style instant rice. quick, cheap, easy, and decently nutritious. but recently some people have to told me that the process that's used to make the rice instant also makes it much less healthy.

can anyone confirm or deny this? i don't mind taking the extra 30 minutes to cook it if it's going to benefit me that much.

In my opinion instant rice is nasty. Regular white rice will take you twenty minutes, depending on altitude, and browwn rice a total of 40-ish minutes.

I'd save the 'instant rice' for camping.

Instant Rice is just cooked, deyhdrated rice. It's like styrofoam. It only takes 10 minutes or so to cook a cup of rice - I'll wait :D

For my upcoming tour, I'm staying in hotels and bringing along a portable rice cooker.

IM pretty sure the nutrients (brown rice at least) are much less in the miute rice. Im not sure. But one thing, get the perfect ratio of liquid to rice, its easy to kill the whole batch (well to the point where you ahve to drain water, but thats just wrong!!)

Is it really rice? Kind of like instant potatoes.

I'm not sure of the specifics of instant rice although as a general principle rice being a grain needs careful preperation, like all grains to maximise there nutritional value and minimise there anti-nutrient properties. See, http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/be_kind.html

Regards, Anthony

Brown rice, which has only the outer hull removed, retains--along with its bran layer--an impressive variety of vitamins and minerals, including niacin, vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, selenium, and even some vitamin E. Brown rice contains only a small amount of protein, but that is of good quality because of its relatively high level of the amino acid lysine. Because the bran is not milled away, brown rice contains four times the amount of insoluble fiber found in white rice--a prime reason for eating brown rice instead of white.


From www.wholehealthmd.com

It's true, because instant rice has been pre-cooked and then dehydrated, its chemistry is inevitably altered. It's like vegetables...the more you cook it, the more nutrients it loses. Most instant rice is fortified with nutrients added back in, but it's not the same.

Brown rice is more nutritious than white rice, but many people don't like the taste/texture of brown rice. (I've found that it grows on you after a while) This is how I see it: Brown rice>> White rice >> Big Mac. Of course, that might be because I'm used to using my Nutrition Degree to help people use diet to lose weight (and eat healthier). For most of the people I deal with, rice (any kind) would be a big step :rolleyes:

i appreciate it ya'll... looks like it's a big bag of real rice next time i go to the store.

For a more objective analysis, simply compare the nutrition data on the labels of minute rice versus regular rice. Compare equal quantities of cooked rice. If you don't want to stand next to the grocery shelves with a calculator in hand, you can check the food nutrient database maintaned at www.usda.gov. They probably have multiple variations of rice in their database and you can get data on equal serving sizes for comparison.

Obviously brown rice has more nutrients than white rice since you make white rice by starting with brown rice and stripping away the outer layer. Although white rice is typically enriched to add back some of the nutrients, it's unlikely to fully compensate. Note that for maximum nutrition you should not rinse white rice before cooking.

PLUS its MUCH more cheaper to get like a two pound bag of brown rice.basmati rice than it is to get a 12 oz. (random number) box.

Brown rice is hard to eat though :p.