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Why you should wash rice with water even if it is clean

Q: Why do people wash rice? The rice I buy in the supermarket in the US is clean.

Krishna:

Rice is usually washed to rinse off dust, insects, little stones, and bits of husk left from the rice hulling process. This may still be important for some regions of the world where the processing is not as meticulous, and may provide peace of mind for others.

Even cleanly harvested, thoroughly washed, and organically grown rice can still contain arsenic.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the earth's crust, soil, and groundwater. Rice is grown in flooded paddy fields. This wet, anaerobic (low-oxygen) environment makes it much easier for the rice plant to absorb arsenic from the soil and water than other cereal crops. The plant draws arsenic up through its roots, depositing it throughout the tissue and into the grain itself—meaning the contamination is internal, not just surface dirt.

Brown rice typically contains more arsenic than white rice because arsenic accumulates in the outer bran layer, which is stripped away during white rice processing.

You wash rice to remove at least the surface level arsenic.

Washing rice with water removes only a small amount of surface arsenic (around 10% to 15%), but cooking it in a large excess of water can eliminate up to 50% or more. Boiling rice in a large ratio of water (such as 6 to 10 parts water to 1 part rice) and then draining the excess can significantly lower arsenic levels.

With the heavy use of plastics in the food supply chain, microplastics have been found in our foods, including rice. The washing process has been shown to rinse up to 20 percent of the plastics from uncooked rice. (1)

Irrespective of the packaging (plastic or paper bags) you buy rice in, it contains the same level of microplastics. Research also showed plastics in (pre-cooked) instant rice have been found to be fourfold higher than in uncooked rice. If you pre-rinse instant rice, you could reduce plastics by 40 percent.

But washing removes some nutrients. For some people, rice offers a small percentage of their daily intake of these nutrients and hence will have a small impact on their health. But for populations that consume large amounts of heavily washed rice daily, it could impact their overall nutrition.

Another study looked at other heavy metals, lead, and cadmium, in addition to arsenic; it found that pre-washing decreased levels of all these from between 7–20 percent.

And pesticides are another reason why you wash rice thoroughly.

Some wash the rice to remove stickiness.

I wash it to get the satisfaction of using something clean!

Footnotes:

1. https://theconversation.com/do-you-need-to-wash-rice-before-cooking...

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