A large population of South India are typically rice consumers. Most of the rice is produced in South India too. About 20 years back, the rural parts in some areas in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka used to depend on other sources of cereals like Jowar and Maize of different varieties. However, of late, with change in economic conditions and food “Perception” that rice is a superior crop (with respect to social status), there has been a considerable shift in the food preferences, with a majority moving on to rice. One reason could be that rice has been traditionally sold at a higher price than the remaining cereals and successive governments have promoted rice cultivation (for reasons only known to them).
There is nothing wrong with this trend. Rice too is a rich source of carbohydrate. However, the carbohydrate in rice is easier to digest than the carbohydrate in Jowar and Maize. So for a sedentary life-style, rice was a better alternative. For physically intensive labour, Jowar and Maize have been better suited. However, the preference has been towards rice ( and wheat).
Coming back to our main point – rice comes in two varieties to the constomers – Raw Milled and Para-boiled.
The raw milled rice is what is obtained by running the raw grain of paddy, in which the rice is enclosed (with the HUSK) through rollers. This separates the husk from the inner seed. The higher the processing, the whiter the rice appears and the thinner it gets. And for some reasons in the past, the perception has been - “the whiter the rice, the better it is” In a lot of cases, this led to loss of nutritious bran (which has most of the B-vitamin that rice had to offer). In the Northern parts of India (and now in the South too), there is an additional perception that the thinner the grain, the better is the quality in terms of “poshness” (e.g., long grained, thin Baasmati rice).
The Para-boiled rice (as far as I know) is prepared by first boiling the paddy seeds and then milled and processing it like rice above.
However, preferences in different states have been different with respect to how much is the processing required for para-boiled rice. Para-boiled rice is generally thicker, more off-white tending to red (the color or the bran). It also takes longer to boil and has a different (not very sweet) smell during the boiling process. The states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu prefer the para-boiled rice while the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (at the time of writing, there was a proposal to break this into three states) prefer the Raw milled rice. One of the reason for this preference was an old social structure – not sure how true this is. When there was a strict adherence to the four varnas of Brahmin, Kshetriya, Vaisya and Shudra, the Brahmins refused to eat food “Cooked” by other varnas. It was however OK to eat the produce from the fields cultivated by the other castes. So since it was difficult to ascertain who boiled the grain used for the para-boiled rice, the brahmins decided to stick to raw rice. It was not milled then. The women folk would pound the paddy and then separate the husk. Then there is another round of pounding to remove the bran. Many of these practices have died down with time and mechanization.
Overall, in a lot of places, there is the preference for raw milled rice. And typically, raw milled rice is costlier than the para-boiled variety.
However, from the view of the overall nutrient constituents, para-boiled rice is better.
The following are some of the nutritional values of one variety of milled raw and paraboiled rice.
Constituents per 100 grams of rice*
Ingredient | Units | Para-boiled Milled | Raw Milled | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Moisture | grams | 13.3 | 13.7 | |
Protein | grams | 6.4 | 6.8 | |
Fat | grams | 0.4 | 0.5 | |
Minerals | grams | 0.7 | 0.6 | |
Fibre | grams | 0.2 | 0.2 | |
Carbohydrate | grams | 79 | 78.2 | |
Energy | Kcals | 346 | 345 | |
Calcium | milligrams | 9 | 10 | |
Phosphorus | milligrams | 143 | 160 | |
Iron | milligrams | 1 | 0.7 | |
Carotene | micrograms | 0 | 0 | |
Thiamine | micrograms | 0.21 | 0.06 | |
Riboflavin | micrograms | 0.05 | 0.06 | |
Niacin | micrograms | 3.8 | 1.9 | |
Total B6 in mg. | micrograms | 0.24 | 0 | |
Folic Acid | micrograms | |||
Free | micrograms | 8.9 | 4.1 | |
Total | micrograms | 11 | 8 | |
Vitamin C | micrograms | 0 | 0 | |
Colene | micrograms | 0 | 0 |
From a cursory look, it does not seem to have much difference. But note that the small differences are big when taken in large quantities. Differences in 100 gms might not mean much. Think of the difference in 1 Kilogram or 20 Kgs over one month.
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