Brown Rice Protein: Strengths & Weaknesses

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!