why is white rice cheaper than brown rice if it’s the processed form of latter?
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I think most people covered the best answers. One possible thing is also that the economies of scale work better when processing white rice as it is much more popular. If something is sold more, the cost of producing it will go down.
In comparison, processing of brown rice is rarer due to lower demand, meaning it is not as efficient to do so.
I was wondering the same thing about milk… The more fat they take out of it (which i guessed should require more processing work), the cheaper it sells.
Why is puffed rice so god damned expensive compared to dry rice? It’s a shelf stable high volume commodity product.
You are adding one massive industrial process onto a sting of 5, it should add pennies per pound. Double the price is fine, but not a full order of magnitude 1000+% increase at retail.
Cereal is about the cheapest food on earth, until it’s breakfast cereals. It’s 10x more work to turn grains into bread with 1/10th the shelf life with a much smaller margin.
It’s life if roasted peanuts were .99c & salted roasted peanuts were $9.99
Not sure if it’s the case with rice, but for a lot of products the ‘raw’ form is more expensive than processed because you’ve got to use the higher quality stuff.
It’s most obvious with fruits and vegetables; all the stuff you buy in the shop will be a nice neat shape, fairly clean, and free from bruises and gouges. None of that matters if it’s going to be chopped up and hidden in other food, so even though there’s a processing cost it still works out cheaper. That processing also hides any imperfections in taste/texture, and can often be tweaked to provide a consistent taste by mixing different batches.
White rice is just brown rice with the bran removed. The bran has oil in it which can be extracted to form another product, rice bran oil. By splitting the cost of production between two products a lower price can be provided for the white rice.
Another factor is that the oil in the bran means that brown rice can spoil more easily than white rice. Shorter shelf life and more costly transportation means brown rice pushes brown rice to be more expensive.
1. A practical factor: White rice has been stripped of the bran and germ of the rice seed. The bran and germ of the rice seed both contain oils which can oxidize and go rancid over time. This means that white rice can be stored for years longer than brown rice without going bad, and it can be stored under less strictly controlled conditions. This makes white rice easier to work with. This in turn reduces the costs of storage, and reduces losses from spoilage.
2. An economic factor: Commodities cost “whatever the market will bear”. People are willing to pay more for brown rice and expect it to cost more. Brown rice is assumed to be healthier and “more natural” than white rice, and this gives it positive associations in the minds of some consumers. Brown rice is thought of as “better for you”, and so people expect it to be sold at a premium for being a better product. Sellers are more than happy to sell it for a premium, because that increases their profit margins on a product that already costs more to handle.
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