Eating For Health

My daughter called me to ask me which is healthier, white rice or brown rice?   She had ordered some Chinese food and chose the brown rice.   Did she make the healthier choice?   Is brown rice healthier than white rice? In the U.S. we have two choices for rice, either white rice or brown rice.   Growing up we never ate brown rice.   We always ate the Minute white rice from the box.   Processing Both white and brown rice come from the same grain but white rice is much more processed.   There are 3 parts to grains – the bran, the germ and the endosperm.    Whole grains like brown rice contain all 3 parts of the grain.   Processed grains like white rice, have the bran and germ removed, leaving only the white endosperm part of the grain.   Brown Rice is more nutritious than white rice Because brown rice has all parts of the grain, brown rice provides more fiber, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium and manganese.   White ric...

Eating healthy isn’t hard, one just had to reduce the amount of processed food and focus more on fruits, vegetables and whole grains.   But what is processed food?   The Berkeley Wellness Letter (January 2016) outlined the various levels of “processed”.   Usually, the less processed the food, the better for your health.   Foods can range from highly processed to minimally processed.   Some processing is actually healthy for you.   For example, pasteurized milk is processed to kill the harmful bacteria so this is a good form of “processed” food.   Highly Processed Foods – For many of us, highly processed foods comprise up to 63% of our calories.   That is too much processed foods.   These are foods so full of processed ingredients they are no longer recognizable as being from a plant or animal source.   Some examples:                 Hot dogs, margarine, m...