CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — Government agencies are urging Filipino families to eat brown rice instead of the widely consumed white rice.
On Wednesday, officials from the Department of Agriculture and Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) enumerated the benefits of eating brown “unpolished” rice compared to its white counterpart which has lesser nutrients. Hazel Antonio, Campaign Director of PhilRice’s Be RICEponsible campaign, noted that brown rice contains low glycemic index that prevents cardiovascular diseases and diaabetes.
The group launched a social media challenge dubbed #BROWN4good challenge to promote brown rice.
DA Region 3 Director Andrew Villacorta explained that the public is not aware that brown rice is not a new variety of rice.
White rice is produced when palay passed thru the miller that removes its “ipa” (husk) and “darak” (bran).
For the brown rice, only the coarse husk is removed and the bran is retained thus its brownish coloring.
Villacorta said that special machineries are required to mill brown rice—a reason why consumption of this more nutritious kind of grain is not popular among Filipino families.
PhilRice said the challenge seeks to promote brown rice as a good food. “It contains antioxidants that prevent cancer and lower blood pressure,” Antonio stressedz adding that consumption of brown rice can result to the country’s rice self-sufficiency because of its higher milling recovery rate of 10 percent.
The BROWN4Good challenge is a competition among all regions nationwide to gather 50,000 posts in social media with the hashtags “#BROWN4Good” and> “#Region3”.
For every post with the said hashtags, a cup of rice is> donated to the less fortunate. The challenge will last until October 31, 2016. –Albert Lacanlale