US Consumers' Perceptions of Raw and Cooked Broken Rice

Rice supplies about 20% of the calories to the world's consumers. Milling removes the outer husk and bran, breaking about 20% of the rice kernels during the milling process that equates to almost 100,000,000 tons of rice annually. Broken rice is discounted in price by almost half or relegated to non-human consumption. This study seeks to understand why this large percentage of rice production is discounted for human consumption. Consumers who routinely consume rice evaluated raw and cooked rice with 5%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% levels of brokens. Sensory analysis indicated the appearance of raw rice with high levels of brokens affected the price consumers were willing to pay. Panelists were not able to discern sensory differences amongst cooked rice samples with different brokens percentages despite an eight-fold difference in brokens (p < 0.01). From this, we concluded that the price discounts imposed on broken rice are not because of perceived differences in the eating quality of cooked rice. Overall impression and overall texture were the two most significant determinants in willingness to purchase rice. The five cooked-rice samples with different levels of broken rice inclusion did not differ in terms of willingness to purchase.