Many people know that southerners can't live without rice. Even for breakfast, they sometimes cook some white rice porridge.

So, why did rice become the staple food in China? Not glutinous rice?

Rice can be subdivided into indica rice, japonica rice and glutinous rice according to varieties.

Glutinous rice usually refers to this opaque white rice grain, while rice is white and transparent.

This is very complicated. In fact, glutinous rice is also a nutritious food. Judging from the composition of glutinous rice, it contains a lot of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B and other ingredients.

Regular consumption of glutinous rice is beneficial to nausea and other symptoms caused by stomach deficiency and cold. Sounds like glutinous rice is good?

In fact, the advantages of glutinous rice go far beyond these. Glutinous rice, angelica, medlar and other raw materials are made into wine, which can relax muscles and promote blood circulation if you drink it often.

This looks very good, so why is glutinous rice not paid special attention to by people?

In the north, glutinous rice is called Jiangmi, and its texture is soft. There is a kind of glutinous rice called blood glutinous rice, which is red, and another kind of rice is as white as snow.

In the south, glutinous rice is very common. Because it is sticky and slippery, it is often used as the main raw material for desserts, such as eight-treasure porridge. It can also be used to brew sweet rice wine. In fact, the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month is also made of glutinous rice flour.

Therefore, people don't hate glutinous rice. The reason why glutinous rice can't become a staple food is mainly related to its characteristics. For example, although it is similar to rice in nutrition, the structure of the two is obviously different.

The structure of glutinous rice? I mean there are subtle differences between the main components of glutinous rice and rice. Although they all contain starch, the starch contained in rice belongs to amylose, while the starch in glutinous rice is obviously different, and most of them belong to amylopectin.

Let's start with simple starch. Starch is composed of glucose, and the difference of glucose arrangement will lead to the difference of starch structural chain.

In this way, compared with rice, glutinous rice is not easily digested and absorbed by the human body, which is why adults always tell their children not to eat glutinous rice often or eat more.

Amylose, amylopectin, from the appearance, amylose is like a long line, amylose splicing chemical bonds, twisting itself into a rope; The shape of amylopectin is somewhat random, it is like a branch, and several chains are intertwined. Compared with amylose, we can obviously find that amylopectin has more branches, which just enables more enzymes to find binding sites.

What does this mean?

This means that amylase in human body can easily decompose amylose, but when faced with amylopectin in glutinous rice, they can only cut off some straight branches, and most of the rest cannot be decomposed. This indirectly makes the amylopectin content in glutinous rice higher, which is also the reason why glutinous rice tastes soft and glutinous.

Some people who like to study food often use glutinous rice to make some novel foods.

Such as glutinous rice lotus leaf chicken, zongzi and so on. During the Dragon Boat Festival, even if people can't wrap zongzi with their hands, most people will buy some zongzi on that day to show their respect for this festival.

Generally speaking, northerners will use red dates and bean paste as fillings, while southerners will mostly use fresh meat and eight treasures as fillings, but in any case, the most important material of zongzi is glutinous rice.

Some people may notice that glutinous rice seems to have saved one's appetite to some extent. Why is such glutinous rice inferior to rice?

I believe that many people have had this feeling when eating glutinous rice products, that is, they don't feel full when eating, and they accidentally eat too much before they find that they can't hold on.

When eating rice, will something similar happen?

In fact, this is the essential difference between rice and glutinous rice. Glutinous rice is not easy to digest, and it is easy to suppress food if you eat too much, while rice is eaten every day, no problem.

Therefore, many experts will remind that glutinous rice is sticky, and infants, the elderly and friends with weak digestive ability after illness should avoid eating glutinous rice cakes. In addition, patients with gastritis, gastroenteritis and other symptoms should also eat less glutinous rice.

Of course, the reasons why glutinous rice has not become a staple food are not limited to these. Think about it, is there much glutinous rice? Compared with rice, it is definitely less. In addition, the price of glutinous rice basically exceeds that of rice, so generally no one takes glutinous rice as a staple food.

In fact, the demand for glutinous rice in the market is not high, which is also the reason why the planting scale of glutinous rice is not large.

In addition, our ancestors took rice as their staple food, so the behavior of eating rice, known as the "first of the five grains", was naturally spread by later generations, and the main function of people eating rice was to satisfy their hunger.