Rice Calories

September 21, 2008

I’ve wondered if chinese people think about the rice calories while eating it. It is such a common food there, they must consider it, right? But turns out that when we’re talking about rice calories we need to be more specific: what type of rice are we referring to and how do we cook it?

Let’s have a look at 3 major types of rice, each one with its own rice calories value. One cup of the popular white rice (regular long grain and cooked) has 205 calories. 1 cup of cooked brown rice has 216 calories and 1 cup of cooked wild rice has only 166 calories in it.

If you are looking more standard weights for rice calories, here they are for 3.5 oz (100 gr) of rice:

• White Rice Calories (long grain, regular, cooked) - 130 calories
• Brown Rice Calories (long grain, cooked) - 111 calories
• Wild Rice Calories (cooked) - 106 calories

Let me point another tricky thing about rice calories. There is a very big difference between cooked rice calories and dry raw rice calories. I got confused a few times with all the numbers and I don’t want that to happnen to you, so read carefully:

When comparing the same amount of rice: 1 cup of cooked rice and 1 cup of dry raw rice - the uncooked rice will have more calories.  That because in 1 cup of uncooked rice there is more rice, hence more rice calories.