知易行难,知行合一 (Walk the Talk)

NOTE : Pictures and data are from here.

These days I become interested in some healthy diet, so I want to figure out the exact food energy of each kind. It’s not hard to find these data out with the help of Google — thecaloriecounter.com. But what confused me is how to distinguish the differences among long, medium and short grain types. The pictures cannot offer any useful help, because I don’t have any basic idea of a “standard” grain type, without such conception how can you tell which one is longer or shorter? So maybe using some mathematical method will be better.Here’s how:

We can use length to width ratio to determine the grain types.

Rough or Paddy Rice (before milling, hulls intact)
Long        3.4 to 1 and more
Medium   2.3 to 3.3 to 1
Short        2.2 to 1 and less

Brown Rice (hulls have been removed but bran intact)
Long        3.1 to 1 and more
Medium   2.1 to 3.0 to 1
Short        2.0 to 1 and less

Milled Rice (hulls and bran layers have been removed)
Long        3.0 to 1 and more
Medium   2.0 to 2.9 to 1
Short        1.9 to 1 and less

We may see milled rice for most of the cases. And I tried some of my rice, both turned out to be the short ones. Now I get it all clear.