Product Review: Yoga Organics Organic Long Grain Brown Rice

I normally buy my organic brown rice from the bulk aisle at Whole Foods. But as probably you well know, Whole Foods doesn't have a store on every neighborhood corner. I have to drive all the way to Highland Park or North Dallas to visit my "neighborhood" Whole Foods, and so I can't always get there every week. I need to have rice, because currently I am enjoying a Chinese food extravaganza in my home every Thursday evening. When I run out of this necessary item, it is, to say the least, inconvenient.

I'm willing to make do with ordinary, non-organic rice. After all, I'm not that picky. However I have one stipulation. It has to be brown rice. I am on a constant campaign to get the "white" out of my diet, and it's made a huge difference in the way I look and feel.

When I'm at the regular grocery store I usually buy Mahatma brown rice. To my dismay, when I arrived at Wal-Mart, there was no Mahatma brown rice. Now, there was Mahatma white rice, but that doesn't do me any good. I'd sooner eat sawdust.

So you can see my dilemma. When I scanned the shelves I found Yoga Organics Organic Long Grain Brown Rice. At first I was put off by the high price tag of $2.66 for a two pound bag. But there was not one single grain of brown rice anywhere else on the shelves, not even an errant one that was left over from a broken bag. So I plunked down the dough for this rather pricey item, since it was the only one that seemed to meet my needs.

When I got it home and began cooking it, I noticed that it had a nuttier aroma than most brown rices. Well, that's certainly a benefit, but I don't think it's really worth paying a full $1.66 more than the Whole Foods' bulk price. And Mahatma Brown Rice, although non-organic, is superior in nutrition. It has a full twenty calories less per quarter cup, and yet has double the iron. It also has 10 percent of both Thiamin (vitamin B1) and Niacin (vitamin B3), although the amount of these nutrients is not listed on the package of Yoga Organics Organic Long Grain Brown Rice.