Brown Rice Bird's Eye Steamfresh or Dry

meghan_elizabeth

Can someone please explain to me the variation in calories between Bird's Eye Steamfresh brown rice, and normal dry brown rice?? The Bird's Eye package says that 1 cup cooked rice is 150 calories. But what I've found for any dry brown rice is that 1 cup is approximately 220 calories (although I've seen anywhere from 200 calories to 280. It seems that each calorie counting website has their own opinion.)

Why such a large calories difference for the same amount of rice?

maricash

A volume measurement for something like cooked rice isn't as accurate as a weight measurement. I think the Bird's Eye is assuming a smaller weight of rice in a cup. For example, the Self Nutrition Data website lists a cup of cooked brown rice at 195 grams and 216 calories. The Bird's Eye Rice is in a ten ounce package and a serving is half the package. 5 ounces is 141 grams, about 72% of the weight of the generic cooked rice. Since 150 calories is about 68% of 220 calories, this makes sense. The Bird's Eye portion has less in it, even though it still fills a cup. (I'm assuming the Bird's Eye is a pre-cooked product so that the weight doesn't change much when you heat it up).

It's better to measure things like rice dry if you can and to use weight if possible. If you pack cooked rice into a cup you are going to get a lot more rice than if you measure it loosely.