Rice Flour: A Promising Food Material for Nutrition and Global Health

Abstract

Hunger and malnutrition, especially children, are still global issues today. Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world population and important nutritional source of not only carbohydrate but also protein. In recent aging societies, protein-energy malnutrition in elderly people emerges also as a social issue. Malnutrition in elderly people raises the risk of falling into age-related chronic diseases. Nutritional care can prevent elderly people from such age-related diseases. Rice and rice flour would be good foodstuff for preparation of diet suitable for and preferred by elderly people. Protein content of rice grains, like the other cereal grains, is less than 10% by weight, which is a little lower than meat and cheese, but higher than dairy milk and yoghurt. Nutritional quality of rice proteins is higher than the other cereal grains. Such relatively higher nutritional quality of rice proteins could be due to high copies of glutelin genes evolved from an ancestral gene common to soybean glycinin and resultant high content of legume-type seed storage proteins. Recently, rice flour became to be utilized for various processed food. The rice seed proteins as well as starch are accumulated in specific organelles termed protein bodies and amyloplast in the cells of endosperm and aleurone layer. By milling rice grains to flour particles consisting of protein and starch nanoparticles, processing characteristics of rice starch and proteins could be changed. To develop rice-based processed food for prevention of malnutrition, rice flour particles from various different rice sources could be blended for desired nutritional composition without spoiling the value of product food.