My Healthy Meal: Organic Brown Rice Lunch
I made a new important discovery today. And I know I am still savoring every moment of this find. Tucked away in a rather nondescript part of Orchard Road is a mixed vegetable rice that sells organic brown rice.
No more plain boring nutrition-less white rice for me after gym now. To most people, it’s just the colour of the rice – white versus brown. But the difference lies beyond the colour itself! A whole grain of rice has different layers. Only the other most layer, the hull, is removed to produce what we call brown rice. This process is the least damaging to the nutritional value of the rice and avoids the unnecessary loss of nutrients that occurs with further processing. Mill the brown rice further to remove the bran and most of the germ layer, and this is when we get our white rice.
In all respects, white rice has lost most of its nutrients. Add further polishing to the white rice to achieve its gleaming flawless beautiful texture, and all the health-supportive, essential fats are stripped away, reducing white rice to a refined starch devoid of its original nutrients.
But brown rice is different. I know for one that brown rice is an excellent source of manganese, selenium (according to some, selenium helps prevents cancer) and magnesium.
Looking at me order brown rice, the mixed vegetable rice auntie could not help but ask me why I knew how to eat it. I just smiled and said because it’s healthy. She returned my smile.
Ordering only spinach, well two servings of spinach actually (spinach is my favourite vegetable), I hopped over to the chicken rice stall to get my $3 worth of chicken breast meat bereft of the skin and with no seasoning.
A beautiful lunch. This is going to be my staple lunch meal for some months to come 🙂