Rice Recipe & Nutrition - Precision Nutrition's Encyclopedia Of Food

Overview

Rice. You’ve heard of it, right?

Of course you have.

Rice is probably the single most commonly eaten food in the world. It provides more than 20% of the calories consumed worldwide, and for half of the world’s population, rice represents as much as half of daily calories consumed. In some Asian countries, the word “to eat” literally means “to eat rice.”

There are over 8,000 varieties in the Oryza sativa family, and preferences for type, processing, and method of preparation vary regionally.

For example, in India, basmati, a long grain aromatic rice with a drier texture is preferred. In Japan, sweet rice, a sticky short grain variety is favored, particularly in iconic dishes like sushi and mochi. In North America, step into any health food restaurant and you will find a dish based around brown rice, a chewier, unprocessed variety with the bran and the germ of the grain still intact.

Rice grows well in environments with heavy rainfall, although today, modern farming machinery ensures that rice crops receive uniform flooding and proper draining, independent of what the skies above are doing. This machinery has also largely taken over the harvesting process of rice, which is otherwise a very labor-intensive job.

Rice has been cultivated for thousands of years and is thought to have originated in China, possibly as far back as 7000 BC. Through a series of travels, crusades, and conquests, rice seeds have gradually scattered across the globe:

From China, rice first spread to various parts of Asia. Arab travelers brought rice into ancient Greece, and then Alexander the Great brought it to India. The Moors brought rice to Spain during their conquests, while the Crusaders brought rice to France. Rice spread gradually throughout southern Europe towards northern Africa. In the 17th century, the Spanish brought rice to South America during their colonization of this continent. Around the same time, slaves from West Africa brought rice to North America.

Rice, it seems, is the food that connects us all.

Today, Asia still dominates global rice production, with China and India being by far the biggest contributors.