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Difficulties in Assessing the Nutritional Quality of Rice Protein¹

Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 and Chemistry Department, The International Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, Laguna, The Philippines

The biological assessment of protein quality is difficult in samples which contain relatively little protein. The difficulty is particularly severe in samples which contain protein of poor quality and, especially so, if the protein is limiting in lysine. Typical difficulties likely to be encountered are exemplified in assays of the nutritive quality of rice proteins. It is concluded that in the samples tested the relative nutritive value (RNV) of the rice protein varied from approximately 50 to 80% compared to lactalbumin, and was negatively correlated with total protein content. The net utilizable protein, however, rose with total protein content between 6 to 10% protein, the fall in RNV being more than compensated for by the increase in total protein. The response per unit lysine consumed in these samples, all of which were limiting in lysine, does not appear to be constant indicating difficulties in the interpretation of chemical score.

KEY WORDS: • relative nutritive value • milled-rice protein • lysine • lysine-threonine fortification

¹ Supported in part by Public Health Service Research Grants AM-09520 and K6-AM-18455 from the National Institutes of Health and the Fund for Research and Teaching, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health and by contract no. NO1-AM-70726. National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases, National Institutes of Health to the International Rice Research Institute.

Manuscript received 17 December 1973.