White rice has been fully milled and polished. These processes will remove some nutrients.
Brown rice is essentially unmilled so it DOES contain more natural nutrients than white rice. (including the cereal germ)
Really the only differences between white rice and brown rice is down to this. Both begin life as the same rice.
We have some rice fields and can choose to enjoy some brown rice if we want, but it's very difficult to store brown rice without spoiling so mostly we have white rice.
The milling groups we use,will (for extra cost) add some additional vitamins to the white rice in a process called Rice Enrichment. Not everyones does it but we do it for all our white rice.
We are able to offset most of the cost of enrichment by making sure we get paid for the milling waste which can be used in animal feeds. Not everybody seems to know that, you must request that from the miller.
I have not done any research but my logic is that "enriched white rice" should be the same as unmilled rice (brown rice)
The Philippine Rice Research Institute centre in Nueva Ecija has plenty of really good advice on all aspects of rice production. Everyone I've ever contacted and talked to there has been extremely helpful.
Maybe some others here can give a much more scientific answer about brown and enriched white.
Actually I have no idea just how much rice is enriched in Pinas. Would be interested to know though.
