[Sca-cooks] Partly OP: Brown vs. white rice?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Magdalena asked:
>>Ok, health-foodie me has been wondering something for a while.  Today,
>>white rice is completely ubiquitous and brown rice is so far an
>>exception that some small grocery stores don't even carry it.  How long
>>this has been true?  When did folks start processing the bran off of
>>rice, and when/where did it become so common that brown rice became the
>>exception instead of the rule?  What would be an appropriate rice to use
>>for period applications - brown or white, long or short grain?
>We have discussed this before, although I don't remember all the 
>details. I seem to remember that the white rice, like the whiter 
>wheat for bread, was prized *because* it took more effort to produce 
>it.

There's also the question of degermination. White rice has a longer 
shelf life than brown rice (or at least whole rice, anyway), because 
brown rice has the part of the germ, the embryonic plant in each 
seed, and this contains some oils which can become rancid. This 
problem isn't as extreme as in the case of, say, oats, but it was 
enough of a problem for both polished rice and parboiled/converted 
rice (not invented by Uncle Ben's) to be fairly old products in 
places like India.

Adamantius