Rice is a staple cereal in all tropical and temperate climates. It requires special machinery to remove the husk and the dark, outer skin of the kernel.
The polished rice commonly used, is almost pure starch, and, like white flour, lacks the nutritive qualities contained in the husk or covering.
It is seldom eaten within three months after harvesting and it is considered even better after two or three years. It requires thorough cooking.
Wild rice is used by the North American Indians. The seeds are longer, thinner, and darker, than the cultivated rice. It is coming into favor as a side dish but it is served more particularly at hotels in soup and with game.
As previously stated, rice contains a larger proportion of starch than any other cereal and the smallest proportion of protein. Next to rice, in starches, comes wheat flour; yet whole wheat or graham flour contain half as much again of protein.
Because of the quantity of starch in flour, potatoes, and rice, it is obvious that one should not eat freely of more than one of these at the same meal, else the digestive organs will be overworked in converting the starch into sugar, the liver overworked in converting the sugar into glycogen and back again into sugar, and be overloaded in storing it up.
By far the best plan is to eat but one cereal at a meal.
Rice contains no gluten, hence it cannot be raised in bread.
Unhusked rice is called paddy. The “vitamins” of rice are in the covering.
A German investigator, working to discover the cause of the disorder of nutrition known as “beriberi” occurring in those who used polished rice freely, found that in those who used unpolished rice, from which the outer husk had not been removed, the disease did not appear. He gave the name of “vitamin” to the substance in the outer husk, which prevented the disease.