In a study published in the magazine “Cadernos de Saúde” of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, researchers illustrate that the combination rice and beans can reduce the risk of oral cancer... Read more…
Rice and Beans: an infallible couple - according to some authors, Brazil was the first country to cultivate the rice in the Americas. The rice was the water corn (abati-uaupés) that the Tupi, long before knowing the Portuguese, already harvested in the flooded areas near the coast.
It is recorded that members of the expedition by Pedro Álvares Cabral, after a pilgrimage by about 5 km in Brazilian soil brought samples of rice, confirming records of Amerigo Vespucci that make reference to that cereal in large flooded areas of the Amazonas. The practice of rice cultivation in Brazil, in an organized and logical way, happened in the middle of the eighteenth century and from that time until the middle of the nineteenth century the country was a major exporter of rice.
The rice has several benefits because it is rich in B complex vitamins, protein and iron, it is a food rich in starch, supplying energy and contributing to the absorption of protein, besides being of easy digestion and rarely causes allergies. The beans, in turn, contain more protein than any other food of vegetable source, being source of B complex vitamins, iron, potassium, zinc and other essential minerals.
As a result of the features demonstrated, the combination of beans with rice is perfect, because they both provide the amino acids that help our bodies to form its own proteins (muscle, skin, hair, nails, bones, cicatrisation). And all this because the amino acids deficient in beans are just those that are present in rice. The rice is low in amino acid lysine, present in the beans. These, in turn, do not present the essential amino acid methionine, abundant in rice; here’s the nutritional importance in the protein formation of this typically Brazilian combination: 'rice and beans’. The ideal proportion between rice and beans is 3 servings of rice to 1 of beans

Nutricional Values:
White rice – Portion: 100g – Kcal: 364 – Carbohydrates: 79,7 – Proteins: 7,2 – Lipids: 0,6 – Cholesterol: 0 – Fibers: 0,3
Beans – Portion: 30g – Kcal: 80 – Carbohydrates: 13 – Proteins: 5 – Lipids: 0 – Cholesterol: 0 – Fibers: 5g

Did you know? – Several researches show that the Brazilian population is leaving aside the habit of consuming legumes and cereals in the last years. According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the average of daily consumption of these foods, per person increased from 120g (in 1987) to 107g (in 1996)
- The United Nations declared the year 2004 as the International Year of Rice, with the motto “rice is life”.