Dr. McDougall's Online Discussion Board

Nice picture of harvesting rice.

http://features.rr.com/photo/03D3058aS0cyl

Fish and rice flourishing together.

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ ... ritage.pdf

Aloha, patty

Yes. When i say richest, i dont means best or beeter than others. i means only country with greatest pil.

Some interesting things I found out on my quest for the "Holy Grail" of rice, which I determined, from reading the Consumer Reports and FDA findings, to be Organic Indian rice. India has the lowest inorganic arsenic samples and combined with the lack of chemical pesticides in organic farming I figured that this is the safest rice.

I found a source on ebay for a brand called Himalayan Pride and ordered a 20lb bag, but received an email from the seller stating that this was not currently available.

I looked on amazon.com and found this rice and ordered it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001HTJF04/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

If you notice the price per pound it works out to be about $5. So you may be thinking, "Were you really stupid enough to pay $5/lb for rice?"

Well, not quite. When I ordered it the price was almost half, working out to about $2.40/lb, which was reasonable since that's actually less than what California organic brown rice is going for in the local healthfood store.

When I ordered it, though, it showed as being the last in stock. When I went back to check on it, it was again back in stock but at twice the price! My order hasn't shipped yet either and I wouldn't be surprised if it got cancelled.

So it looks like organic, Indian rice has become some sort of commodity like gas and, contrary to personal belief, I'm not the only genius out there that figured out that it's probably the safest rice to eat.

I guess I'll end up eating organic California rice which seems to be "safe enough," and rather than dying of arsenic-induced cancer I'll probably be killed by being attacked by a pack of rabid squirrels out on a nature hike, which in the end was God's will after all!

danmc wrote:I found a source on ebay for a brand called Himalayan Pride and ordered a 20lb bag, but received an email from the seller stating that this was not currently available.

Awww... and I was about to place an order for that myself.

Thanks for the update. Did they give any word about future availability? It's not surprising that the demand would go up after the recent "arsenic scare." I wonder if that might die down after a while?

I've been getting non-organic long grain brown rice for around $.90/lb. Not too excited about paying twice that... or more.

There are several good alternatives to brown rice.

I use barley and millet. You can cook either in a pressure cooker in about 15 minutes and they both keep well in the refrigerator. You can cook once and enjoy for a few days. Rice, especially white, does not keep well in the fridge.

Indian stores are a great place for these grains. Amazon looks good too though I have not bought from them:

http://www.amazon.com/Arrowhead-Mills-Pearled-28-Ounce-Packages/dp/B001LQTDXM/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1349363979&sr=1-1&keywords=barley

http://www.amazon.com/Millet-Whole-Organic-28-oz/dp/B0037RPQSY/ref=sr_1_2?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1349364373&sr=1-2&keywords=millet+whole

rickfm wrote:

danmc wrote:I found a source on ebay for a brand called Himalayan Pride and ordered a 20lb bag, but received an email from the seller stating that this was not currently available.

Awww... and I was about to place an order for that myself.

Thanks for the update. Did they give any word about future availability? It's not surprising that the demand would go up after the recent "arsenic scare." I wonder if that might die down after a while?

I've been getting non-organic long grain brown rice for around $.90/lb. Not too excited about paying twice that... or more.

I asked the seller to let me know if it becomes available again.

I was buying non-organic, California brown rice for about $.85/lb, but I'm eating a little over 1 pound of uncooked rice (obviously I'm not eating it uncooked...I'm not sure what that translates to in cooked rice) and would feel much more at ease eating something that I felt confidence in.

Thanks for the info, pundit999. Barley is out for me since I gave up gluten, but I may try millet. If I don't like it I can always put it in my bird feeder!

If worried about Gluten, another grain to try is Sorghum or Jwar/Joware/Juwar.

I found it harder to cook than millet (about 1:3 grain:water and cook for a long time), rice or Bulgar, but it tastes fine. Indian stores carry it as Juwar. You can get it whole as well as flour.

Millet is very good as dessert also: just add some raisins, may be some sugar, cinnamon and you have a tasty treat!

A definitive answer from PCRM (lead by Neal Barnard; McDougall, Campbell, and Esselstyn all sit on its advisory board), says to keep eating rice. See here: http://support.pcrm.org/site/PageServer ... login=true.

Thank you, PurplePotato.

PCRM wrote:Rinse your rice and cook it with extra water. Cooking rice and draining the excess water can remove a significant amount of arsenic.

That's how I cook my brown rice. I've pointed out the technique elsewhere around here a couple of times, based on this:
http://pinchmysalt.com/how-to-cook-perfect-brown-rice/

I've only been using four to five cups of water per cup of rice. Maybe I should increase that.

I wanted to add a couple of other things about my quest for the holy grail of "perfect rice." The arsenic issue got me thinking about how I cook rice and that I was using tap water which of course is totally absorbed into the rice.

I don't even drink tap water since I don't trust it, and buy distilled water to drink. I didn't want to use distilled water to cook the rice since it's so expensive, so brought out my Brita pitcher with a filter to use with the rice. But that got me to thinking exactly how well does a Brita filter work? Looking up data through Google I realized that Brita works ok but not so great, so I found another filtering system called "Zero Water."

This system removes all dissolved solids in water, hence the name. It comes with a tester that shows total dissolved solids as parts per million. My tap water tested at over 200. The water that was filtered by Brita showed over 80. The Zero Water came out at 0, as did my distilled water.

So, to mitigate any issues with the rice, I'll be using the Zero Water for the water to cook my rice. It doesn't make sense to me to try to buy the rice with the least amount of contamination, only to use contaminated water to cook it in!

danmc wrote:So, to mitigate any issues with the rice, I'll be using the Zero Water for the water to cook my rice. It doesn't make sense to me to try to buy the rice with the least amount of contamination, only to use contaminated water to cook it in!

You raise an excellent point. Arsenic is water soluble and water can be a source of arsenic so using water with arsenic to rinse and cook your rice in, will not help to reduce exposure.

A fliter is a good idea, however, Zero Water may not be the solution. I recommended using purified water (RO or Distilled).

From the Zero Water website...

http://www.zerowater.com/certification-cleaning.html

Q. Does the filter remove Arsenic?
A. At this point in time, we are not certified for reduction of arsenic.

And

http://thirstforwater.com/2009/10/top-5 ... ilter.html

Q1. Will Zero Water filter remove arsenic?
A: I'm afraid not, pal. Zero Water filter is not certified to remove arsenic at this point in time. ..... Currently, the most effective method to remove arsenic is using a reverse osmosis water filter.

I just put a post up on the whole rice and arsenic issue in my forum and in one of the articles, (Arsenic & Rice: What You Can Do) discuss the water issue.

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=32434

In Health
Jeff

Thanks for your info Jeff.

I was able to locate a water quality report for my city, and even spoke to a technician at the treatment plant who gave me a very thorough explanation of the data (I'm guessing that people don't call him to ask questions very much!)

There is no arsenic detectable in the drinking water for my city. One of the major contaminants is lead. The Zero Water system is certified to remove lead and chromium.

I know that I've seen the reverse osmosis vending machines in a store, can't remember which. I just don't want to have to keep going to a store and lugging around bottles to get water.

Forgot to add a question: does the pasta method for cooking rice, using a lot of water and then draining the water off, lose a significant amount of the nutrients from the rice?

Thanks for the info everyone. I hope to hear more about guidelines. I guess for now it would be best if possible to buy indian or chinese brown rice. But then, they have the best standards regarding arsenic but what about other chemicals, since they have been known to have lax pollution standards or at least I thought so. Does this include their food?
thanks ,
mkh9

mkh9 wrote:Thanks for the info everyone. I hope to hear more about guidelines. I guess for now it would be best if possible to buy indian or chinese brown rice. But then, they have the best standards regarding arsenic but what about other chemicals, since they have been known to have lax pollution standards or at least I thought so. Does this include their food?
thanks ,
mkh9

It seems to me, based upon some researching on Google, that the safest rice from an arsenic contamination standpoint would be organic rice grown in India or Thailand. I haven't found any of this locally, but have found it on the internet. The price seems to have gone up quite a bit though, I'm guessing based upon demand due to the Consumer Reports article. I haven't seen Chinese rice either locally or anyplace on the internet for sale.

Because buying Indian or Thai organic rice off the internet is currenty cost prohibitive, for me, I'll stick to California organic brown rice and use filtered or distilled water.

I made my first batch of pasta style rice, 12 cups water, 2 cups rice, following Jeff's recipe. It turned out great.