Preliminary Comparison of Fatty Acid Composition(s) of Selected Commercial Rice Brands Commonly Consumed in North America

There is growing interest in whole cereals consumption and research in recent years partly due to their rich sources of bioactive and nutritious compounds for human health. Many different brands of rice are widely cultivated and consumed in North America and Asia. Here, we investigated the fatty acid profile(s) of five selected rice brands commonly consumed in North America via gas chromatography analysis. All rice brands showed desirable quantities of nutritional fatty acids, with the essential fatty acid linoleic acid as a major fatty acid component. Linoleic (C18:2n6 cis) acid followed by linolenic (C18:3n3) acid were the predominant polyunsaturated fatty acids found in all of the rice brands. Linoleic acid was found to represent 34.8-38.1% of the identified fatty acids while linolenic represents 1.13-1.58%. Overall, the brown rice brands showed relatively higher amounts of unsaturated fatty acids than the white rice brands. The data presented in this article adds to the nutritional and potential health value of these rice cultivars.