If a meal can only eat rice without vegetables, save money on vegetables, buy overpriced rice is worth it. The question is, will this work? The reason why we eat rice with vegetables is not because the rice is not good, but to ensure adequate nutrition. The nutrients we need are divided into five categories: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Let’s take a look at the content of these five major categories of nutrients in rice and see if they are sufficient to meet the needs of the body. The role of carbohydrates is mainly to provide energy for the body. The content of carbohydrates in rice is extremely high, per 100 grams of rice (referring to raw rice, the same below. Some nutrients are reduced when cooked) contains up to 80 grams of carbohydrates, easily meeting the body’s energy needs. In this sense, rice is a good staple food, which is why more than half of the world’s population has chosen rice as a staple food. Among the three main staple foods, rice is the largest contributor to human dietary energy, providing 20%, wheat 19%, and corn 5%. The second most abundant substance in rice is water, which accounts for about 12%. After removing carbohydrates and water, there is not much left. For example, the amount of protein, which is essential for our life activities, is much less in rice, containing only about 7 grams per 100 grams of rice. Moreover, rice protein lacks lysine, an essential amino acid, and is not a good protein, most of which cannot be absorbed and used by the body. The FAO uses a method called the digestible indispensable amino acid score to evaluate the quality of protein. According to this method, the score of rice protein is less than 0.4, while the score of soy protein is 1 and the score of milk protein concentrate is 1.31. Therefore, eating rice cannot meet the human body’s demand for protein. In addition to its role as an energy substance, fat is also involved in a number of important physiological functions of the body. There are two important fatty acids (linolenic acid and linoleic acid) that cannot be synthesized by the body and must be consumed from food, called essential fatty acids. Rice is very low in fat (less than 0.7%) and does not contain essential fatty acids. Therefore, the body’s need for fat cannot be met even by eating rice. There are many kinds of vitamins that the human body needs. Some vitamins are completely absent in rice, including vitamin C, vitamin A (which can be converted from carotene), vitamin D and vitamin B12. Except for vitamin D, which can be synthesized by the body through sunlight, the other three vitamins must be absorbed from food. Long-term deficiency of these three vitamins will lead to scurvy, blindness, pernicious anemia and many other serious diseases, until death. There are vitamins in rice that are present but at very low and negligible levels, such as vitamin B1, B2, folic acid, and choline. Only pantothenic acid, niacin, and vitamin B6 contain relatively more, but they are not enough to fully satisfy the body’s needs. So by eating rice, also can not meet the body’s need for vitamins. There are also many kinds of minerals that the human body needs. Some are very low in rice, including iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc., which are almost absent. Moreover, rice contains the anti-nutritional factor phytic acid, which affects the body’s absorption of minerals such as iron, calcium, manganese and zinc. So by eating rice, it also cannot meet the body’s need for minerals. In short, the main role of rice is to provide energy, is used to fill the stomach, important nutrients either no or very little, must be supplemented by animal food, vegetables and fruits. Eating only rice without vegetables can lead to severe malnutrition. In order to ensure nutrition, even good rice should be eaten with vegetables, but also eat a lot of vegetables, rice instead of eating less. Claiming that “delicious rice without vegetables” is seriously misleading to consumers. There are still a lot of poor people in the world who can’t eat other food than rice, and these people are prone to malnutrition. If we can improve rice, improve the protein variety of rice, so that it contains a variety of rich vitamins and minerals, we can make it into a nutritionally complete food, until then, it is possible to eat only rice without vegetables. The only way to do this is to introduce new genes from other species through transgenic technology, such as genes introduced from corn so that rice also contains carotenoids, turning it into “golden rice”.