Brown Rice Protein: Strengths & Weaknesses

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Some say that new research has shown that brown rice protein powder impedes nutrient absorption

  • Today’s main feature looks at why that belief might be (phytic acid), why it’s not a problem (no phytic acid in protein isolate), and how to reduce it in foods that do have it, such as wholegrain rice (soaking & heating)

  • The details are important though, so please do hop to the main feature to get those!

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured recipe is for all those times you want healthy burger buns and the stores don’t tend to sell them. It’s a healthy (and delicious!) quinoa avocado bread; it’s full of protein, gluten-free, has a good fiber content, and is tasty too.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

How To Stop Binge-Eating: Flip This Switch!

“The Big Eating Therapist” Sarah Dosanjh has insights from both personal and professional experience:

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Q&A Thursday

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I had a friend mention that recent research showed Brown Rice Protein Powder can be bad for you, possibly impacting your nutrient absorption. Is this true? I’ve been using it given it’s one of the few plant-based proteins with a full essential amino acid profile!❞

Firstly: we couldn’t find anything to corroborate the “brown rice protein powder [adversely] impacts nutrient absorption” idea, but we suspect that the reason for this belief is: brown rice (not brown rice protein powder) contains phytic acid, which is something of an antinutrient, in that it indeed reduces absorption of various other nutrients.

However, two things are important to note here:

1. the phytic acid is found in whole grains, not in protein isolates as found in brown rice protein powder. The protein isolates contain protein… Isolated. No phytates!

2. even in the case of eating whole grain rice, the phytic acid content is greatly reduced by two things: soaking and heating (especially if those two things are combined) ← doing this the way described results in bioavailability of nutrients that’s even better than if there were just no phytic acid, albeit it requires you having the time to soak, and do so at temperature.

tl;dr = no, it’s not true, unless there truly is some groundbreaking new research we couldn’t find—it was almost certainly a case of an understandable confusion about phytic acid.

Your question does give us one other thing to mention though:

Brown rice indeed technically contains all 9 essential amino acids, but it’s very low in several of them, most notably lysine.

However, if you use our Tasty Versatile Rice Recipe, the chia seeds we added to the rice have 100x the lysine that brown rice does, and the black pepper also boosts nutrient absorption.

Because your brown rice protein powder is a rice protein powder and not simply rice, it’s possible that they’ve tweaked it to overcome rice’s amino acid deficiencies. But, if you’re looking for a plant-based protein powder that is definitely a complete protein, soy is a very good option assuming you’re not allergic to that:

Amino Acid Compositions Of Soy Protein Isolate

If you’re wondering where to get it, you can see examples of them next to each other on Amazon here:

Brown Rice Protein Powder | Soy Protein Isolate Powder

Enjoy!

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This Or That?

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Recipes Worth Sharing

Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread

They’re gluten-free, full of protein and healthy fats, generous with the fiber, easy to make, and tasty too! What’s not to love? Keep this recipe handy for next time you want healthy burger buns or similar:

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age – by Alvaro Fernandez et al.

We say "et al." in the by-line, because this one has a flock of authors, including Dr. Pascale Michelon, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, Dr. Elkehon Goldberg, and various others if we include the foreword, introduction, etc.

This is relevant, because those who contributed to the meat of the book (i.e., those listed above), it makes the work a lot more scientifically reliable; one skilled science writer might make a mistake; it’s much less likely to make it through to publication when there are a bevy of doctors in the mix, each staking their reputation on the book’s content, and thus having a vested interest in checking each other’s work as well as their own.

As for what this multidisciplinary team have to offer? The book covers such things as:

• how the brain works (especially the possibilities of neuroplasticity), and what that means for such things as memory and attention

• being “a coach not a patient”; i.e., being active rather than passive in one’s approach to brain health

• the relevance of physical exercise, how much, and what kind

• the relevance (and limitations) of diet choices for brain health

• the relevance of such things as learning new languages and musical training

• the relevance of social engagement, and how some (but not all) social engagement can boost cognition

• methods for managing stress and building resilience to same (critical for maintaining a healthy brain)

• “cross-fit for your brain”, that is to say, a multi-vector collection of tools to explore, ranging from meditation to CBT to biofeedback and more.

The style is pop-science without being sensationalist, just communicating ideas clearly, with enough padding to feel casual, and not like a dense read. Importantly, it’s also practical and applicable too, which is something we always look for here.

Bottom line: if you’d like to be given a good overview of what things work (and how much they can be expected to work), along with a good framework to put that knowledge into practice, then this is a great book for you.

Click here to check out The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness, and optimize your brain health and performance!

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Wishing you the healthiest happiness today and every day,

The 10almonds Team