Male rats were fed on a diet supplemented with 10% rice powder (polished Akagome, a reddish rice, or polished Kinuhikari, a nonglutinous white rice) for 42 days.
No significant difference was observed in the feed efficiency ratio and the relative weight of contents in the digestive organs between the diet supplemented with Akagome and that with nonglutinous white rice. The reducing sugar rate in the feces of the rats fed with Akagome powder was the same that of the rats fed with the nonglutinous white rice powder.
The dietary fiber in polished Akagome was 13.7%, and 7.7%in the polished nonglutinous white rice. The carbohydrate gas released from the dietary fiber prepared from the two rice samples was measured in a batch culture with pig cecal bacteria for 24 h at 1 h intervals. The volume of released gas from the Akagome fiber was higher than that from the nonglutinous white rice fiber, indicating that the fermentation quality was different between the two rice fibers.