Comment by Spagbol

I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice was only eaten by the elite because of the additional work required to seperate it (like white bread only being for the wealthy during the middle ages), and that beriberi was a noticed more in times specifically because of industrialization increasing the availability of white rice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency Apperently a lot of white rice is now enriched with thiamine for this reason