Reducing Inorganic Arsenic in Rice

[helwen]

Followup on my rice post from the other day.

Can't copy link, but do a search for "rice exhaustive rinsing" and pick the link from www.lundberg.com (PDF).

Exhaustive rinsing is where you rinse the rice 5-6 times, until the water runs clear (a traditional Indian method). Removes 28% of arsenic, compared to raw rice.

Combine that with cooking rice using a large water to rice ratio of 6:1 reduces arsenic by 58% compared to raw rice. The more common ratio of 2.5:1 does nothing to reduce levels.

Steaming the rice reduced levels but results were inconsistent in the study.

The arsenic is considered to be most likely a result of soil conditions and how the rice is grown. Levels are very high in rice from south central U.S., but are better in California.

Recommendations from one of the articles I posted previously were Basmati rice from India and Pakistan, Jasmine rice from Thailand, and also rice from Egypt and the Himalayas.

Comments

[oakmouse]

That rinsing method is traditional for Japanese rice, too; it's how Grandma-san taught JM to prepare rice for cooking. It has the beneficial side-effect (with white rice) of washing off talc which may have been used to dust the rice to make it look whiter.

We regularly use Jasmine rice from Thailand, because it's the cheapest Asian variety of rice that we can get here. (Can't get Nishiki or Niko-Niko or any of those brands anywhere in town.) It's pretty good, but we do still eat a lot of brown rice, and yes it's from the American SE; South Carolina, mostly. We rinse it thoroughly, but we do that with any kind of rice.

[freya46.livejournal.com]

I always rinse my rice, no matter what it is. I generally buy them at a bulk barn. I'll have to aske where they get theirs. Thank you. :-)

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I gave up on cooking rice sometime after moving up here -- couldn't seem to adjust to the higher altitude and then I started eating less carbs... but I'd like to have it once in a while, so maybe I'll pick up some Jasmine.

I only rinsed briefly too, so maybe the longer/multiple rinses will help with the end result too.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Welcome :) One of the things I think the internet should be for!