Brown Rice Vs. White Rice

THE GOVERNMENT should provide incentives to farmers who would plant low-amylose rice as a means to improve rice supply in the country. This is the belief of Alfonso G. Puyat who has done personal research on the advantages of producing low-amylose varieties for milling into brown rice. He is the president of Philor, a company that is engaged in manufacturing plant growth enhancers and other farm inputs.

The low-amylose varieties are the varieties that have less than 18% amylose content which are suitable for milling into brown rice. When cooked, the low-amylose brown rice is soft and that is the eating quality highly preferred by consumers. Of course, the low-amylose rice can also be milled into well-polished white rice but there is a big advantage of the brown rice over the well-milled white rice.

Puyat compared the grain recovery when one kilo of palay is milled into brown rice and a kilo of the same variety that is milled into white rice. The result? One kilo of palay when milled into white rice produced 630 grams. It had a milling recovery of 60-65%.