WHITE OR BROWN RICE?

In the United States it has been the custom for quite some time to treat high blood pressure with a rice diet. A Swiss sanatorium has employed the same diet to combat hypertension with the satisfactory result that the pressure decreased significantly, but at the same time the diet produced a bad side effect – the patients became anaemic. What could have caused this unfortunate result? Well, it was quite simply due to a lack of knowledge. No one took into consideration that white rice is not at all suitable for diet purposes; having had its goodness to a large extent removed, it gives rise to typical deficiency symptoms. Did not the outbreak of beriberi make the world aware of this fact?

A mono-diet of rice is indicated only if it is based on the whole grain; it must be unpolished brown rice. Only then will the patient benefit and the blood pressure drop without any accompanying deficiency symptoms. It is a good thing to observe this in everyday cooking as well, because brown rice is far more nutritional than the refined white kind, as brown rice contains 9.5 times more minerals (nutritive salts) than white rice. During the refining process, not only is the external cellulose husk removed, but so too is the tasty silvery membrane and the germ. While this process makes for a nice white rice grain, it devalues it at the same time. It is an open secret that the removed ‘wastes’ of the rice grains are not thrown away but are bought by the pharmaceutical companies to be included as ingredients in their tonic medicines. It is always good to look behind the scenes if you can, because you often discover some useful hints for better health.

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