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.

Whole grains anyone? Anywhere?

The Ministry of Health is into the "Eat Whole Grain"campaign, and even Minister has blogged about it.

Now there's no disputing the healthiness of eating whole grain, but where on earth do you find it? I went searching for it in Giant supermarket... and found red unpolished rice hanging pathetically where the small packets of barley hung. At $0.83 for a 300gm pack. That works out approximately $2.80 per kilo. And if I were going to feed my family for a month I would have to carry home about 20 packs.

Next went to where the sacked rice were. And among the piles of rice (huge range!!) there, I found only one variety of hermetically sealed brown rice retailing at $11.95 for a 5kg bag. Hermetically sealed?? My calculator went click-click-click and I figured that worked out to approximately $2.40 per kilo. Not too far from it, the housebrand perfumed Thai rice was on offer at 18.30 for a 10kg sack. Only 2 clicks this time....and I worked it out to be $1.83 per kilo.

Not easy to find this brown rice! And it seems that wretched rule of market place was working.... you know, the one that says the less you process the food stuff, the more expensive it gets. So unpolished rice costs approximately 60 cents per kilo more than the conventional white rice.

Then another thing I discovered.... ( I did wonder why the rice was hermetically sealed)... and that is unpolished rice has a short shelf life as it tends to go rancid. Some suggest that the rice be stored in the freezer. Duhhhh.....there is no way I was going to stuff a 5 kg sack of rice into my freezer!!

I guess it's down to buying small packs of unpolished rice ... no more 10kg sacks!

So eat healthy is going to cost ... both in times of $$ and time.