When it comes to the consumption of roti and rice, rice is more commonly consumed across the world in comparison to roti whereas roti is more preferred in the Indian subcontinent. However, roti has also a stable presence across Indian as well as international cuisines and restaurants such as Rotimatic, but rice dominates the most kitchens both of homes and food markets in the world. Eventually, roti as well as rice, both are healthy foods in terms of health and overall wellbeing in spite of their negligible differences in relation to vitamins and micro and macro-nutrients. While debating on the aspects of comparison between roti and rice, consumption of both roti and rice do not have any adverse effect in the body provided they are consumed appropriately.
Roti and Rice Ingredients:
Roti is usually made out of whole wheat flour as well as multi-grain or millet flour such as millets, rice, jowar, vegetables etc. or a mixture of all. On the other hand, though rice does not have other counterparts as the roti there are different varieties of rice in different parts of the world. However, rice comes with different types and names such as brown rice, red rice, black rice, other different types of rice with different proceeding methodologies such as polished or milled rice and parboiled rice etc.
Nutritional Value of Roti and Rice:
30 grams of brown rice provides 105 Kcal of energy along with 22.4 grams of carbs, 2.7 grams of protein, 0.372 grams of fat, 1.32 grams of fibre and 3.4 µg of folate P. Similarly, 30 grams of parboiled, as well as milled rice, contain 105.4 Kcal of calories, 23.1 grams of carbs, 2.34 grams of protein, 0.165 grams of fat, 1.1 grams of fibre and 2.9 µg of folate P, and 30 grams of raw milled rice provides 109.6 Kcal of energy along with 23.4 grams of carbs, 2.38 grams of protein, 0.156 grams of fat, 0.84 grams of fibre and 2.7 µg of folate P. On the other hand, 30 grams of whole wheat flour provides 98.7 Kcal of energy along with 19.25 grams of carbs, 3.17 grams of protein, 0.459 grams of fat, 4.54 grams of fibre and 8.7 µg of folate P.
Overall Health Benefits of Rice and Roti:
As stated earlier, both roti and rice have almost equivalent calories, vitamin and nutritional properties and do not have any diverse effects on health. However, when roti and rice benefits are analysed through a disease-lens, both roti and rice have their own different types of benefits. If you take weight gain and diabetes which has more relation to calories, since both roti as well as rice have almost similar amount or number of calories and can never be classified as best or worst. Many nutritionists say that carb dose not result in weight gain, but calories do.
In this context, as far as calories are concerned, both roti, as well as rice, contribute the same and you need to control your diabetes or weight loss diet based on your strategy. However, as most food and diet reviews such as Rotimatic reviews rightly observe that there are other parameters such as carb, protein, fat, fibre, folate, and other minerals and vitamins which can determine whether to prioritise rice or roti.