The premium priced and packaged brown rice from the supermarket may in reality be whiter and more polished than ever, and the so-called ‘diabetic friendly’ variety, nothing more than parboiled white rice. Armed with a stereo-zoom microscope, food scientists from Madras Diabetic Research Foundation (MDRF) decided to put 15 types of supermarket ‘healthy’ rice grains to the test. What they found was that in many cases there wasn’t a grain of truth in the claims mentioned on the packets.
“With more diabetic patients approaching us with newer varieties of rice that claim to be zero cholesterol and sugar-free we decided to examine 15 of the popular ones,” says MDRF food and nutrition research scientist Sudha Vasudevan, one of the co-authors of the study recently published in the Journal of Diabetology.
The biggest shocker was a brown rice brand that proclaimed an 8.6 glycemic index (GI), a value Vasudevan says has never been reported as per the international GI table (the lowest GI of rice is around 40). GI is a relative ranking of carbohydrate in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels. A GI value of less than 55 is considered low, while 70 and above is high.
“On examination the rice was found to be parboiled brown rice. There were fissures on the surface and a mild disruption of the bran and germ layers,” says MDRF food scientist Shobana Shanmugam, also a co-author. Fissures and a disrupted bran and germ layer, she says, make the rice mushy when cooked as more water is absorbed by the grain, intensifying its starchiness. This in turn increases the GI.
What one needs to understand, says Vasudevan, is that all brown rice may not be low GI. “The other misconception is that hand-pounded rice is healthy, but findings show it has a GI similar to polished white rice because of the abrasions on the grains,” she says. Vasudevan explains that bran is rich in fat and tough to cook to a soft consistency, so Indians tend to cook it longer. “Indians add a lot of water to brown rice and that breaks the bran layer.” MDRF recommends brown rice to be cooked with a 1:1.5 cup water ratio as opposed to the usual 1:3.
Minimally polished rice also have a high GI, says Vasudevan. “Parboiled rice is also polished and therefore not that healthy. Parboiling is done to increase vitamin B and for a longer shelf life, but it removes the germ and bran layer, resulting in higher GI.”
The other tall claims, says Shanmugam, were sugar free and zero cholesterol options. “No plantbased food has direct cholesterol, but in excess they can cause triglyceride and cholesterol levels to go up.” As for sugar-free rice, she says, the starch in rice is converted to glucose on digestion, so in effect there cannot be sugar-free rice.
“The key is to not get carried away by labels. And to remember that rice needs to be eaten in moderation,” says Vasudevan.
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