Rice is the second largest crop worldwide, topped only by wheat. Without rice, most of

Asians don’t consider a meal a meal—in places they eat it three times a day, 365 days a year.

They also treat it with as great reverence there as we do bread in the western hemisphere. Many

ceremonies feature rice, including one we have adopted, throwing of rice at newlyweds. Rice is

an ancient fertility symbol—with the toss of a handful we wish the happy couple numerous

children. Although the concept is dated, the ritual remained.

Ideal natural conditions for rice growing are hot growing seasons and low-lying, marshy

lands that the tides flood twice a day as they force fresh-water rivers back from the ocean. These

lands are perfect for rice—very fertile from the annual nutrient-rich spring floods.

Regular flooding of rice fields away from its natural habitat imitate that condition, though

not with the twice-a-day clockwork schedule of tides.

Types of rice

Rice is a common cereal plant that belongs to the Genus Oryza. Within this genus there

are 25 species, but we only cultivate one throughout the world. (There is a second species

Africans grow locally.)

Rice has a truly amazing number of varieties, estimated in number from 2500 to 100,000,

(depending on the authority quoting it) that growers bred from the original wild rice grass.

Commercially, there is one simple distinction among all the great varieties of rice: long-grain (or

Indian) rice and short-grain (or Japanese) rice.

At the kitchen level we have several types of popular types of rice, each serving a

specific purpose. We have brown rice, polished white rice, converted (or parboiled) rice, instant

rice and glutinous rice. Basmati and jasmine rice have become trendy items that now appear in

most well-stocked pantries, too. Asia, of course, offers many more choices. Every household

stocks at least three types of rice: a white polished rice for the family table, an unpolished, lower-

priced brown rice for the servants and an inexpensive, low-quality rice for the dogs and other

pets.

What makes the difference

It is the milling process that gives us the different types of rice. The first step is to remove

the hull, the tough outside cover that protects and holds the grain together. What is left are the

rice grains which we know as brown rice. It is brown because a thin bran layer still covers each

individual grain, like the skin on a grape.

To produce white rice, the grains go through an abrading process that removes the thin

bran covering, as well as the rice germ that sits at one end of each grain. Both the bran layer and

the germ contain a small amount of stored fat that turns rancid on storage. Removing both gives

us unpolished white rice which still has another thin outer layer with a small amount of fat. The

next process is to put the unpolished rice through a machine where stiff wire brushes remove that

thin outer layer from the grain. This step yields a high polish for improved appearance, which is

the basis for the name polished rice. Since now all fat has been removed, polished rice has a

virtually indefinite storage life and is the preferred rice throughout the world, partly because of

tradition and partly because of its attractive appearance. One hundred pounds (or 100 kg) of

brown rice yields 91 pounds (or 91 kg) of polished white rice. The 9 pounds (1 kg) lost is the

bran, the germ and the thin fatty layer surrounding the grain.

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