Rice Trivia | 40 facts about the food

Rice is an edible seed of the grass that many people in the world love to eat. At the same time it is considered an important ingredient for the Asian cuisine.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. Rice is a staple food in low and lower-middle-income countries.
2. More than half of the world’s population eats rice with at least 20% of their daily calorie intake.
3. Wheat, corn, and rice are the world’s three leading food crops.
4. There are more than 40,000 varieties of rice.
5. Close to 50% of the calories consumed by the entire human population comes from wheat, corn, and rice
6. The poorest countries consume the least wheat.
7. The United States has the least consumption of rice in the world.
8. The average American only eats up to 10 cups of rice for the whole year, while an Asian may eat 5 to 10 cups of rice per day.
9. If stored properly, uncooked white rice can remain fresh and edible for 10-30 years.
10. A single seed of rice will result in over 3,000 grains.
11. Rice is grown in almost every part of the world, except in Antarctica.
12. Laos, Bangladesh, and Cambodia ranks the highest in rice consumption per capita.
13. China as a whole consumes the most rice in the world.
14. China and India are the world’s largest rice producers.
15. Compared to all the continents, Asia’s rice consumption is very high.
16. Most rice-eating Asian countries exceed 100 kg per capita, each year.
17. Rice is the fastest-growing staple food in Africa and Latin America.
18. Rice has minerals and antioxidants that keep the skin soft and smooth.
19. The Great Wall of China was built with rice.
20. Wild rice is not rice at all. Wild rice is a distant relative of commercial rice.
21. All white rice came from brown rice.
22. It’s just that the white rice’s outer bran layer is polished to make the rice taste better.
23. Oryza Sativa is the scientific name for Asian rice.
24. The Great Wall of China is held together with sticky rice.
25. While the Great Wall of China was being built during the Ming dynasty in the 15th and 16th centuries, workers used a porridge made with rice along with calcium carbonate as a mortar to hold the wall’s stones together.
26. Uncooked brown rice has a shelf life of just three to six months because the bran coating will oxidize.
27. Wild rice isn’t rice.
28. Wild rice is a distant relative to all of the other rices commonly eaten today, most of which are in the Oryza sativa family.
29. Instead, wild rice is part of the Zizania genus. It’s a grain harvested from marsh grasses grown in North America and China.
30. All white rice starts brown.
31. White rice is just brown rice that’s been rid of its outer bran layer and polished.
32. According to the US Rice Producers Association, people in Asia eat up to 300 pounds a year and residents of the United Arab Emirates consume 450 pounds per year.
33. The French, on the other hand, eat hardly any rice at all -just ten pounds every year.
34. The largest bowl of fried rice was fed to pigs.
35. In October 2015, 300 cooks teamed up in Yanzhou, China, to break the world record for the largest bowl of fried rice.
36. They did it, creating a bowl of Yeung Chow fried rice (made with rice, eggs, chicken, ham, shrimp, dried scallops and vegetables) that weighed in at 9,242 pounds.
37. Everyone celebrated until pictures emerged of some of the rice (deemed unfit for human consumption) being loaded into dump trucks and sent to pig farms.
38. According to Guinness, the entirety of the rice needed to be edible (by humans) to qualify.
39. So the record is still held by the Turkey Culinary Federation in Bolu, Turkey, which made a 6,944 pound bowlful.
40. September is the National Rice Month in the U.S.A.