Quinoa vs Brown Rice: Quinoa Wins All 7, Per Calorie Too

Cooked quinoa beats cooked brown rice on all 7 nutrients both rows carry, per 100g and per 100 calories. Per 100 calories it has 1.7× the protein, 2.0× the fiber and 3.4× the iron. It also has fewer calories: 120 per 100g against 147. The rows are USDA FoodData Central FDC 168917 (quinoa, cooked) and FDC 173263 (UNCLE BEN'S parboiled brown rice, cooked).

Most food fights end in a split. This one doesn't, so the useful questions are how big the gaps are and what brown rice still does better.

Is quinoa healthier than brown rice?

On every nutrient we can score, yes: 100g of cooked quinoa has 64mg of magnesium, 172mg of potassium and 1.49mg of iron, against 39mg, 61mg and 0.53mg in 100g of cooked brown rice. Quinoa also leads on protein, fiber, zinc and calcium. Because quinoa has fewer calories per 100g, every lead gets bigger when you count per calorie instead of per gram.

The seven gaps, smallest first

Per 100 calories, quinoa's smallest lead is zinc at 1.7× (0.91mg against 0.52mg) and its biggest is calcium at 6.9× (14.17mg against 2.04mg). None of the seven is a rounding artifact. USDA rounds its figures, so we gave brown rice every benefit of that rounding and quinoa the worst of it. Quinoa still came out ahead on all seven.

On protein, that puts cooked quinoa level with cooked buckwheat in our grain ranking, and brown rice 9th of 10, ahead of only pearled barley.

Where brown rice still wins

Brown rice has less fat and more carbohydrate per calorie: 0.58g of fat and 21.29g of carbs per 100 calories, against 1.60g and 17.75g for quinoa. Neither fat figure is high. But if you want your grain to be almost pure carbohydrate, for example as fuel before a long run, rice is the more direct source.

Brown rice also has less sugar, 0.10g against 0.72g per 100 calories. Both amounts are too small to matter on a plate. Sodium is tiny in both, under 6mg per 100 calories. Taste, texture and price decide a lot of real meals, and none of them are in these rows.

Is quinoa healthier than white rice too?

Mostly, but not on everything: per 100 calories, enriched white rice (FDC 169708) has more iron than quinoa, 1.47mg against 1.24mg, and more calcium, 15.45mg against 14.17mg. Those two leads come from enrichment, which adds iron back to white rice after milling. Quinoa still wins the other five against white rice: protein, fiber, magnesium, potassium and zinc.

So the grain quinoa beats cleanly is brown rice. Against white rice it wins 5 of 7.

What a normal scoop looks like

A 150g scoop of cooked quinoa is 180 calories, with 6.6g of protein, 4.2g of fiber and 96mg of magnesium. Swap in brown rice at the same weight and you eat roughly 220 calories for 4.6g of protein, 2.55g of fiber and 58.5mg of magnesium. You get more of each nutrient from quinoa and about 40 fewer calories, at the same weight on the plate.

What these two rows leave out

Quinoa is often called a complete protein. Amino acids are not in our rows, so we don't score that claim either way. We also hold no glycemic index, so this post says nothing about blood sugar. The brown rice row is one parboiled brand. Regular brown rice is close, but not identical.

Related

The pairing has its own page at quinoa vs brown rice, and the full row is on quinoa. For the other rice question, brown rice vs white rice is a real split. The grain protein order comes from our grain protein ranking.

Swapping grains is easy. Keeping count is not.

Moving from rice to quinoa is one of the easiest upgrades you can make, and one of the easiest to forget about by Thursday. With Sunn you text "quinoa bowl with chicken and greens" on WhatsApp and it logs it in seconds. At the end of the week, ask how your fiber compares with last week, and it answers from your own meals.