Hello again
!
Let’s go into some detail about Brewers Rice and Corn for this post
Brewers Rice:
Brewers rice is essentially broken white rice. The more “visually” desirable whole white rice pieces are sifted from the broken white rice pieces to be used in the human food chain. The remaining broken pieces contain identical nutrition to the whole white rice pieces. This is used in the brewing industry or in the pet food industry.
Brewers rice primarily consists of starch; an energy providing nutrient that is also essential to the structure of kibble. It also is a source of protein. You can read more about the different types of rice here:
The "Sticky" on Rice / Nutrition Corner / Your Pet's Nutrition / Home - RoyalCanin Corn:
Corn is what I lovingly called the golden nugget of nutrients. It is packed full of beneficial nutrients, some many people don’t even realize! You can get highly digestible protein (including amino acids methionine and cysteine, which are important for coat health), omega 6 fatty acids (including linoleic acid, which is important for skin and coat health), fibre (insoluble fibres, this is what the outer shell or capsule is made of), minerals, vitamins and even antioxidants. Yes I said antioxidants!! Corn is an excellent source of lutein and zeaxanthin, two antioxidants important in full body antioxidant protection as well as notably in the eye. Check out this USDA website link to see all the beneficial nutrients
Foods List. For some reason the direct links aren't working, but search for "corn dent" and "corn sweet" and select the yellow varieties.
Note that we consume sweet corn, whereas dent corn or field corn is the type used in pet food. Interestingly enough, the corn we use in pet food is actually more nutritious than the corn we consume (though it’s still packed full of nutrients). Why? Human corn is designed to be sweet (therefore it appeals to our sweet taste buds) whereas field corn is designed to be more nutritious, so less sugar but more usable starch for energy. I added a chart showing the two different types of corn side by side and the levels of nutrients (from the USDA website)
Why do we think corn doesn’t provide nutrients to us or our pets? We “see” it in our stool the next day right??? (I won’t go too much into poop… but know it’s probably one of my fav topics) Well we are lazy chewers, and actually what we “see” is just the capsule or outer shell, the insoluble fibre component, which makes its way completely through our bodies shows up in our stool. Think when we bite into a cob of corn. We usually end up spraying every person within 5 ft of us! That’s our teeth breaking through the outer capsule, making all the valuable nutrients mentioned above available for digestion and utilization by the body.
For pet food, we do the chewing for them through grinding. At RC we grind our corn to 0.8mm. The grinding increases the surface area to volume ratio, meaning that there is more area for our digestive enzymes to get in there and digest all the valuable nutrients. Even the insoluble fibre of the capsule is ground down. Remember that fibre but provides gastrointestinal support, including gut health, gut motility and promoting a beneficial bacteria population in the colon.
Hope this helps
Ashley