Usually, I buy brown rice in 5-kilo packages at a nearby supermarket and it costs me 264 pesos or almost 53 pesos per kilo. Our town's public market also sells organic brown rice for 50 pesos a kilo. I am so glad that, just last week, I was able to find organic brown rice sold at Sta. Lucia East Supermarket for only 39 pesos a kilo. The cheapest white rice in supermarkets is sold at 35 pesos a kilo which means that I only added 4 pesos per kilo to what I regularly spend on white rice. Not bad, don't you think? Before, to cut down on extra costs, I would tell my househelper to mix white rice with brown rice but we need not do that anymore. We can now enjoy pure organic brown rice with our daily meals.
When I was still a kid, I remember eating brown rice whenever we have vacations in the province. I remember hating how it looked like and how it tasted as well. Its texture was coarser than the white rice we ate back home. It was the usual rice in the province, fresh from the farm, dried and pounded the traditional way. My older cousins would tell us that they can only eat white rice on special occasions. Brown rice is peasant's rice, they would say.
Now, it's the other way around. Brown rice is more expensive than white rice. Of course the laws of supply and demand have something to do with that. Another reason for this is that rice manufacturers would need additional specialized equipment to prepare brown rice. Brown rice also has a shorter shelf life compared to white rice so these manufacturers cannot produce much unless they have a guaranteed market for it. By the way, I keep our stock of brown rice inside the fridge.
In the past, white rice has been found to cause beriberi because of its lack of vitamin B1. Vitamin B1 is stripped off the grains during processing. Rice producers were then compelled to enrich their rice. Still, we should remember that part of the process of cooking rice is washing it. This step actually makes the vitamins and phytochemicals go down the drain. Brown rice still has its bran which keeps the innate vitamins and minerals intact even when its washed. Aside from being high in fiber content, brown rice is also rich in manganese and selenium. Manganese helps support a healthy nervous system while selenium reduces the risk of colon cancer. Brown rice also lowers cholesterol and helps in weight loss. Diabetics benefit the most from eating brown rice because its magnesium content helps the body maintain stable blood glucose levels and improves insulin secretion.
It's a hard fact that healthy living is now more expensive than having just the regular stuff. Nevertheless, I would prefer spending a little more than the usual just so we can have a healthier diet. I hope that more and more people get into having brown rice to increase the demand and supply and bring down the costs. For now, I am happy with my 39 pesos per kilo brown rice find.
2 sweet comments:
thank you for all the info. My family has just started consuming pure brown and red rice due to my mom's incessant pleading. =) we (including my 4 year old son) learned to appreciate its coarse texture as we found it similar to mais. Now, the white conventional rice is already boring to our palate. I'm trying to find other retail stores selling brown and red organic rice. We have been getting ours at Sta. Lucia. As you've mentioned, it costs almost the same as regular rice. I'm going to check out the one at tiendesitas. I wonder if they still have the P40/kilo brown rice after the series of typhoons. Happy healthy living! God Bless!
thank you for all the info. My family has just started consuming pure brown and red rice due to my mom's incessant pleading. =) we (including my 4 year old son) learned to appreciate its coarse texture as we found it similar to mais. Now, the white conventional rice is already boring to our palate. I'm trying to find other retail stores selling brown and red organic rice. We have been getting ours at Sta. Lucia. As you've mentioned, it costs almost the same as regular rice. I'm going to check out the one at tiendesitas. I wonder if they still have the P40/kilo brown rice after the series of typhoons. Happy healthy living! God Bless!
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