Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Quest for the wholey grain

So here's the result of my quest to track down whole grain supplies in the supermarkets. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a reasonable supply of whole grained rice at the supermarkets, particularly at NTUC where the best value appeared to be their Thai Brown Unpolished Rice retailing at $2.06/kg for a 2.5kg bag. It is nonetheless, still significantly more expensive than ordinary white rice.

I had previously reported that at Giants:
Giant brand normal white Thai Fragrant Rice was retailing at $1.83/kg
They had a hermetically sealed brown rice 5kg @ 11.95 ($2.39/kg)

At Cold Storage:
Song He "Healthy Rice" 2.5kg @ $7.30 ($2.92/kg)
New Moon Red Cargo Rice 2kg @ $4.95 ($2.47/kg)
Paddy King Red Cargo Rice 1kg @ $3.30 ($3.30/kg)
Paddy King Mixed rice (20% red/brown rice) 2.5kg @ 7.75 ($3.10/kg)

At NTUC:
NTUC Thai Red Unpolished Rice 2.5kg @ $5.65 ($2.26/kg)
NTUC Thai Brown Unpolished Rice 2.5kg @ $5.15 ($2.06/kg)
NTUC Thai Healthy Rice (20% red/brown rice) 2.5kg @ $5.65 ($2.26/kg)

One thing to note is the amount of mislabelling that occured for the rice on the shelves. Whole grain does not refer to whole grain as we understand it to be, i.e. the unmilled hulled rice grains. What is labelled as whole grain rice apparently means the polished rice grains are unbroken and therefore 'whole'. The biggest culprits for this mislabelling is actually the NTUC brand. The hulled rice is called at NTUC, unpolished rice.

Oh yes, while looking I also scoured the shelves for hulled barley, being the whole grain equivalent for barley. They do not exist on the shelves.

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