Ben's Original, formerly called Uncle Ben's, is an American brand of parboiled rice and other related food products that were introduced by Converted Rice Inc., which is now owned by Mars, Inc. Uncle Ben's rice was first marketed in 1943 and was the top-selling rice in the United States until the 1990s.[1] In 2020, it was rebranded as "Ben's Original".[2][3]
History
In the 1910s, the German-British chemist Erich Huzenlaub (1888–1964)[4] and the British chemist Francis Heron Rogers invented a form of parboiling designed to retain more of the nutrients in rice, now known as the Huzenlaub Process.
The process entailed vacuum drying the whole grain, then steaming, and finally, vacuum drying and removal of the husk.[5]