Whole grains-and brown rice-are what our ancestors ate-the hulls were not removed, and the grain was not polished or bleached-so all the vitamins, fiber and other nutrients were intact.
Technology was developed to make white rice or bleached flour by tumbling the grains till the hulls came off and they were polished-then the resulting stuff was bleached, and you were left with an empty source of calories and carbs, but no real nutrition.
To boost the nutrition, modern mills infused the white rice and flour with small amounts of nutrients-unnaturally putting back a small amount of the good natural stuff they’d taken out. Hence, the term “enriched” bread or flour, or rice, which just means an inferior product to what nature provides.
I’ve found that a much smaller amount of whole grain bread or rice is more filling than a larger amount of that gooey, tasteless white crap, too.
I sometimes eat bread in the winter-bread that I make from scratch, with rye or other whole grains-I order them from a family mill here in Texas. I also bake sourdough French bread sometimes because I have a neighbor I barter it to for fresh yard eggs.
Yes, it is what our ancestors ate for about 10,000 years back.
And whole grains are more filling and they spike our blood sugar less.
But we had ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years before that who did not eat grains, and the argument against whole grains now, whether right or wrong, is described in the link I offered above.
Do you have a good recipe for sourdough bread you care to share?