OCR Text |
Show Grade and Variety of Rice Important, Says the Department of Agriculture When buying rice it is helpful to know grade as well as variety. Variety Va-riety indicates its choiceness as food and influences length of cooking. cook-ing. Grade indicates quality and influences price. For nine years the bureau of agricultural ag-ricultural economics has graded rice on the basis of official standards stand-ards promulgated by the secretary of agriculture. Rice usually is sold to dealers by these grades, but the retail purchaser may not always have this information. There are separate grades for brown rice and white rice of each of the common varieties, and three classes for "broken" rices, which are used chiefly for industrial purposes. pur-poses. When cleaned, however, these broken rices are just as edible as the whole grain, though not so pleasinginappearance after cooking. For brown rice there are four federal fed-eral grades: extra fancy, fancy, choice, and sample grade. For while rice there are six grades: extra ex-tra fancy (U. S. No. 1), fancy (U. S. No. 2), extra choice (U. S. No. 3), choice (U. S. No. 4), medium (U. S. No. 5), and sample. Rice of any of these grades, except sample grade, for both white and brown rice, is wholesome for food. Sample grade rice may or may not be wholesome, depending on whether the rice is in sound condition. condi-tion. These grades are based principally principal-ly on cleanness, freedom from mixture mix-ture with other varieties, and number num-ber of whole kernels. The top grade of white rice, for instance, consists of well-milled whole kernels, white or creamy in color. In this grade there are practically no broken kernels ker-nels and no foreign material mixed with the rice. In the next grades there may be more defects, with greater allowances from grade to grade downward. The wholesale price of rice varies with the variety and the grade. The retail price is affected by the:;e and other factors, but bulk rice is always al-ways cheaper than rice in packages, pack-ages, and large packages cost less per pound than small ones. |