Benefit of Rice Bran (Part 1)

Hi, Have you ever noticed the appearance of the white rice you bought from the market or stores?  Is the appearance of the rice so clean and shiny that they look like small pieces of pearl?  I agree with you that the nice and clean appearance of the rice plays an important role to attract buyers.  Rice without rice bran will have longer storage lifetime.  But, are we aware that some nutritional values for our health have actually lost from the rice when the rice bran is removed?  Rice bran contains nutrition that imparts valuable effects on human health.  For readers who wish to find more information about the rice bran and what nutrition it contains, you may please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran or other similar sites.

Few years ago, I visited some small-family-owned rice mills in Cibinong, a small town south of Jakarta.  Unfortunately, no pictures of the mills were taken.  My purpose to visit the rice mills was not to buy rice but to buy the rice bran to feed my ducks.  From these visits I knew how the rice was processed and how the rice bran was obtained from the rice.  There were times when I had to wait for the operator to complete the milling process.  While waiting, I took and ate a small amount of fresh soft rice bran from the pile beneath the running rice milling machine.  The bran was warm, smelled very good and, of course, tasted very nice.

I am writing this brief story to share with the readers the experience of my father about how the rice bran dramatically improves his health, in particular his “escape” from the threat of coronary disease.

To be continued…

Rice bran and its oil contain large concentrations of several compounds that could potentially prevent chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease and cancer.

The LSU AgCenter faculty have been actively identifying, extracting, purifying, and evaluating the functionality of several of these compounds. Their initial studies with rice bran focused on stabilizing lipid degradation that leads to flavor problems.

During these studies, it was found that rice bran contained high levels of both tocopherols and tocotrienols, which compromise vitamin E and act as antioxidants in the body. Also, high levels of a mixture of compounds referred to collectively as oryzanol were
identified within rice bran.

Oryzanol components are complex compounds that can act as an antioxidant, improving solubility in cell membranes and potentially lowering cholesterol by competitive inhibition of absorption and synthesis.

The individual components of the oryzanol can be separated, leading to the identification of 3 major fractions of oryzanol:

• Cycloartenyl ferulate
• 24-methylene cycloartanyl ferulate
• Campesteryl ferulate