Nutrition Comparison: Brown Rice Vs. Wild Rice

I have been eating brown rice for years. Growing up we always had brown rice and so I never really questioned it. When it came time to buy my own groceries I chose brown rice because I like the taste better and was very fond of the fact that it was so good for you. When I was pregnant I started to really get into nutrition a lot more and discovered wild rice. Even though brown rice is super good for you wild rice is said to be even more good for you and so I decided to look closely at their nutrition facts to determine which one was healthier.

Wild rice has less calories per serving than brown rice, fifty calories almost twenty-five percent less. In addition it has only a third of calories from fat that brown rice does and half of the sodium. You get more protein from a serving of wild rice as well as four times as much vitamin E and six times as much as folate. Brown rice does have one more gram of fiber than wild rice but the amount of sugars, iron and vitamin K are going to be about the same in both brown and wild rice. Carbohydrates are one thing that brown rice offers more of, you get ten more grams of carbohydrates with brown rice than with wild rice. In addition brown rice offers more thiamin, twice as much actually, more niacin, B6 and twice as much as pantothenic acid than wild rice.

There is no denying that both wild rice and brown rice are healthy. What seems to make wild rice end up on top is that the fact that the nutrients that is has more of, and many more of, are very important nutrients. Folate is a B vitamin that occurs in food and folate deficiency is linked to low birth weight, slow overall growth rate in infants and children as well as many other things. Clearly vitamin E and protein are very important to have enough of in ones diet. With a decent amount of fiber and low calories wild rice seems to be the logical choice for anyone who is dieting, but even if you are not watching your weight wild rice is the better choice of the two.

Since you will likely find that wild rice is cost more than brown rice, you might use both of them, alternating between the two each time that you buy a bag of rice, to save money. This way though you will be able to eat healthy rice.