Parboiled Rice

by Sandi Busch,

Demand Media 

     

Parboiled rice has more fiber than regular white rice.

Parboiled rice has more fiber than regular white rice.

Parboiled rice might sound like it's precooked, but it's not. Instead, it's processed quite differently from other types of rice. The resulting grain is cooked and served just as you would white or brown rice. However, because of the special processing, parboiled rice is a better source of fiber, calcium, potassium and vitamin B-6 than regular white rice.

Basics

After rice is harvested, its inedible hull is removed to produce brown rice. If rice is put through a second step of processing to remove the bran, it becomes white rice. Unlike brown and white rice, the process for parboiled rice begins before the hull is removed. The complete grain of rice is soaked, steamed and dried, then the hull is removed to make parboiled rice. The steaming enables the rice to absorb nutrients and changes the starch so that it cooks into a firmer, less sticky dish of rice than regular white rice. The steaming does not precook the rice, so it still takes about 20 minutes to prepare.

Carbohydrates

One cup of cooked parboiled rice provides 41 grams of total carbohydrates, or about one-third of the recommended daily intake of 130 grams. The same portion has 1.4 grams of fiber, which supplies 4 percent of men’s and 6 percent of women’s daily fiber. Parboiled rice has double the fiber than you'd get from cooked white rice. It has a low glycemic score of 38, compared with a high 89 for white rice, notes Harvard Health Publications. A low glycemic score indicates that the carbohydrates in parboiled rice do not cause a large spike in blood sugar.

B Vitamins

Parboiled rice is especially rich in niacin, providing 4 milligrams, or 23 percent of the recommended daily intake in 1 cup of cooked rice. You’ll also get 19 percent of the daily intake of vitamin B-6. These values are about double the amount you would get from non-enriched white rice. Your body needs B vitamins to metabolize food into energy, but they also fill other roles, such as helping make hormones and neurotransmitters. Vitamin B-6 removes the amino acid homocysteine from your bloodstream by turning it into other substances. This might help keep your heart healthy; high levels of homocysteine are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Minerals

One cup of cooked parboiled rice supplies 2 to 3 percent of the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium. You'll get a slightly bigger boost of zinc, with 1 cup containing 0.58 milligrams of zinc. That amount represents 5 percent of men’s and 7 percent of women’s daily needs. Zinc performs vital roles throughout your body, from forming the structure of proteins to regulating DNA. If you don’t get enough zinc, your immune system becomes impaired; it needs zinc to produce the cells that fight bacteria and infections.