What type of rice is healthiest? Eating rice for weight gain.

What type of rice is healthiest? eating rice for weight gain.

It’s a staple of global diets and often put on the lofty pedestal of healthy food options. But eating rice – especially frequently and in high quantities – poses a rarely talked about health risk.

Let’s not waste time here. You know what rice is. Bodybuilders, strongmen, and gym-rats of all prospective shapes and sizes can be found across the globe taking down a plate piled with rice and protein with the same fervor at which they approach the plates at the gym.

If you’re looking to add more calories to your diet, rice is a good way to go. Depending how far into your weight gain effort and research you are, chances are you’ve probably already integrated it into your diet.

But, please…Make good choices. Rice is not perfect, and not all rice is created equal. You may not know it, but the way rice is grown makes it excellent at absorbing harmful metals, it graciously does this so that you too can follow in its path and also absorb harmful metals when you eat it.

Namely: mercury, cadmium, lead, and arsenic. All of which bad for you at high levels and some of which (arsenic is a big one) are carcinogenic, meaning they can cause cancer.

The more servings of rice you’re eating, the more of these metals your body is taking in.

But there are two main ways to mitigate this health risk:

Choosing a safer rice
Preparing your rice properly.

Choosing the best rice:

According to our research, we would recommend:

California sushi rice
Thailand jasmine rice
Thailand or Indian basmati rice

Both type of rice and its place of origin have an effect.

California sushi rice may be harder to find in your local grocery store. It is also a smaller grain and stickier, so the eating experience is different from other types of rice.

If C.A. sushi rice isn’t readily available or if you don’t like it as much as other types of rice, jasmine and basmati are still massively better options than your traditional white or brown rice.

Different locations don’t just grow one type of rice. California is also known for growing jasmine, basmati, white and brown rice.

Just make sure that the rice you get is grown in a place where it absorbs less harmful metals, such as California or Thailand.

The calorie content of different types of rice are overall fairly similar enough that we don’t recommend basing your choice off this factor.

It’s also good to note that organic and non-organic rice have the same levels of harmful metals.

Quick / instant rice products often have lower levels as well.

Brown rice (particularly US grown) has some of the highest levels, one of the main factors of this is because brown rice still has its husk. The husk absorbs a lot of these harmful metals. White rice has been husked and so there are lower amounts found within. Even still, white rice grown in the Southern U.S. will typically have higher levels than other options do.

Source: HBBF, What’s in your family’s rice? Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead in Popular Rice Brands—Plus 9 Safer Grains to Try

*The term ”heavy metals” is considered by many chemists to be poor terminology and doesn’t equate to toxicity in an element. But the metals listed on this graph are all harmful to humans.

Preparing your rice properly:

Rice cooking tips:

Rinse your rice, 5-6 times or until water is clear
Boil your rice in a 6:1 ratio. Six cups of water per 1 cup of rice.
Avoid cooling rice as this may (as in might or might not) reduce its caloric levels

Rinsing and boiling your rice as outlined above can cut down levels of harmful metals by about 50%.

Unfortunately, it also reduces the levels of beneficial nutrients such as iron and vitamins. This may seem like a major drawback, but if you are eating a balanced and varied diet, you’re likely getting the nutrients you need already from other places.

Additionally, we’re mainly focused on gaining weight here. And rinsing and boiling your rice has no significant impact on the caloric quality of the rice you are eating. This is because these calories in rice mainly come from the complex carbohydrates (in the form of starch) within. They aren’t as water soluble as simple carbohydrates (like sugar) so it won’t impact the caloric content.

What might impact the caloric levels is cooling your rice, such as by putting it in the refrigerator. It can cause the formation of resistant starch, which is less digestible and therefore your body can receive less calories from it.

However, how much cooling reduces the calories in rice is something there’s not a lot of information on. Some sources claim it’s significant, but these same sources are also targeting those looking to lose weight, so it’s possible they are exaggerating this effect to be able to pitch it as a cool-awesome-easy weight loss hack.

Ultimately, it’s probably still ideal to consume rice right after it’s cooked. But if you like meal prepping or just have left overs go ahead and do it anyway, it’s not a big deal. Re-heating the rice may break down those resistant starches anyway and lead to a rebound of the caloric content.

All that rinsing and boiling can add a lot of time to your meal-prep. Keep it mind it’s less necessary if you’re eating a type of rice with an already lower level of toxic metals. If you want to skip a rinse or two every now and again no one will blame you. Just do your best to do best by you.

Okay, that’s about all we have to say about rice right now. Thanks for reading, make good choices. We love you, and you don’t have to say it back.

Works Cited - Just in case you don’t believe us or you want to do some more research.

Dartmouth article: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/arsenicandyou/arsenic-in-rice-and-rice-products/

ApplianceUpdate.com article: https://applianceupdate.com/does-rice-lose-calories-when-refrigerated/

Ohio State article: https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/cooling-pasta-changes-starch

TheCookingBooks.com article: https://thecookingbooks.com/does-cooking-rice-reduce-calories/

Clevelandclinic.com article: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15416-carbohydrates

ConsumerReports.org article: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm

Healthy Babies Bright Futures May 2025 report:https://hbbf.org/sites/default/files/2025-05/Arsenic-in-Rice-Report_May2025_R5_SECURED.pdf

Malabadi, Ravindra & Kolkar, Kiran & Chalannavar, Raju. (2022). White, and Brown Rice- Nutritional value and Health benefits; Arsenic Toxicity in Rice plants. 4. 3065-3082.

Lama, E., Ozola, R., Rudovica, V., Bavrins, K., & Viksna, A. (2018). Analytical Studies on Contents of Essential and Toxic Elements in Rice Available in Latvian Retail. Proceedings of the International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM, 18, 27–32. https://doi.org/10.5593/sgem2018/3.2

Al-Salman, F., Ali Redha, A., Ali, Z., Mohammed, Z., Ebrahim, M., Ilyas, Z., & Hussain, S. A. (2021). Analysis of primary metabolites, inorganic phosphate, selected heavy metals and radioactive contamination in imported rice in Bahrain. Moroccan Journal of Chemistry, 9(4), Mor. J. Chem. 9 N°4 (2021) 649–659. https://doi.org/10.48317/IMIST.PRSM/morjchem-v9i4.25418

Note: You may wish to perform baptismal rites during one of the 5-6 rinses you give your rice, to remove spiritual impurities as well as the toxic metals which will be washed out. As well as to secure your meal’s spot in your religion’s version of heaven. Please contact your personal religious authority on whether or not this would be appropriate.

It is never appropriate to perform such rites while boiling your rice, no matter how much water you use.

Disregard if atheist.

P.S. Here’s one of our favorite rice choices (not sponsored, wish we were) and one of our favorite go-to high calorie meals:

460 Calories (100 more than this product’s basmati equivalent)

$1.49 at Aldi

The packaging doesn’t include its location of origin but the regular 5lb bag from this brand is from Thailand, so there’s no reason this rice wouldn’t have been grown there too.

Mix in breaded chicken (~540 calories if you cut up 3 breaded chicken patties, you can go ahead and make them in the microwave)

Add your favorite teriyaki sauce. We aren’t including the calories because measuring out sauce borders on a-too-far-gone obsessive mental state when it comes to calorie counting. Just add as much as you like and call it an off the books bonus.

Then add in ¼ cup serving of sunflower seeds for an extra 180 calories and some added fiber. Add another ¼ cup if you feel like it. Mix it all together. You won’t really notice they’re in there except a nice little extra crunch every now and again.

460 + 540 + 180 = 1,180 calories

It takes about 5 minutes to prepare. High calorie, high protein, some fiber and tastes as good as whatever teriyaki sauce you put on it. Getting hungry just typing about it.