Brown rice syrup is not a healthy alternative to other sweeteners. Despite its natural, whole-grain image, it is essentially concentrated sugar with a uniquely high glycemic load and a well-documented arsenic contamination problem. It contains virtually no fiber, vitamins, or minerals, and its sugar profile makes it one of the fastest blood-sugar-spiking sweeteners available.
What Brown Rice Syrup Actually Is
Brown rice syrup is made by breaking down the starch in cooked brown rice using enzymes, primarily alpha-amylase, which chops long starch chains into shorter sugars. The liquid is then strained and reduced into a thick, amber-colored syrup. This process strips away most of the fiber and micronutrients that make brown rice a reasonable whole grain, leaving behind a concentrated sweetener.
The final product is 52% maltotriose (a chain of three glucose molecules), 45% maltose (two glucose molecules), and 3% straight glucose. Every sugar in brown rice syrup breaks down into pure glucose in your body. That makes it fundamentally different from table sugar or honey, which contain a mix of glucose and fructose.
How It Affects Blood Sugar
Because brown rice syrup is almost entirely glucose or glucose chains, it hits your bloodstream fast. Your body breaks maltose and maltotriose into individual glucose molecules quickly, triggering a sharp insulin spike. This gives brown rice syrup a very high glycemic index, higher than table sugar.
Some health food marketing promotes brown rice syrup as better than high-fructose corn syrup because it contains no fructose. There’s a kernel of truth here: fructose in excess does stress the liver and can drive fat production through pathways that operate independently of insulin. But trading fructose problems for a massive glucose spike is not an upgrade. For anyone managing blood sugar, whether due to diabetes, prediabetes, or insulin resistance, brown rice syrup is one of the worst sweetener choices available.
The Arsenic Problem
Rice absorbs arsenic from soil and water more readily than almost any other grain. When rice is processed into a concentrated syrup, the arsenic concentrates too. This is not a theoretical concern. Testing of commercial brown rice syrups found that inorganic arsenic, the more toxic form, made up 80 to 90% of the total arsenic content in two out of three syrups tested.
Inorganic arsenic is a known carcinogen linked to increased risks of bladder, lung, and skin cancers with chronic exposure. It is also a neurotoxin. Research in children suggests that moderate arsenic exposure (urinary levels above 50 micrograms per liter) may have adverse effects on cognition and development. In adults, studies associate similar levels with increased health risks.
The FDA has set an action level of 100 parts per billion for inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal, but there are currently no U.S. regulations specifically limiting arsenic in rice syrup or foods made with it. Several public health researchers have called this a significant regulatory gap.
A Particular Risk for Infants
The arsenic issue becomes especially serious when brown rice syrup appears in infant and toddler formulas. Some organic formulas use brown rice syrup as a primary ingredient because organic standards restrict corn syrup solids. Research published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that toddler formulas listing organic brown rice syrup as a main ingredient contained arsenic concentrations more than 20 times higher than formulas without it.
When reconstituted, the soy-based formulas with brown rice syrup contained inorganic arsenic at 1.5 to 2.5 times the EPA’s safe drinking water limit of 10 micrograms per liter. For a 13-pound infant relying on this formula as their sole food source, total arsenic intake would exceed the World Health Organization’s provisional maximum tolerable daily intake. Infants are in a phase of rapid neurological development, making them especially vulnerable to contaminant exposure. Emerging data suggest arsenic exposure early in life may pose risks that extend well into adulthood.
A 2025 study looking at infants after the FDA’s 2020 action level on arsenic in rice cereal found that urinary arsenic levels were generally below toxicity thresholds. However, infants eating more servings of rice-based foods still had measurably higher arsenic levels, suggesting current regulations may not go far enough.
No Meaningful Nutritional Value
The word “brown rice” makes this syrup sound wholesome, but the enzymatic processing removes the qualities that make brown rice nutritious. The fiber is gone. The B vitamins are gone. What remains is sugar and water, with trace amounts of protein that survived the manufacturing process. Calorie for calorie, brown rice syrup offers nothing that plain table sugar doesn’t, while carrying the added baggage of arsenic contamination and a higher glycemic impact.
Tooth Decay Risk
Brown rice syrup’s sugar profile also presents a dental health concern. Lab studies found that oral bacteria ferment both maltose and maltotriose, producing the same total amount of acid as other sugars over a two-hour period. Maltotriose ferments a bit more slowly than maltose, but the end result for your teeth is the same. The assumption that glucose-based syrups are gentler on teeth than sucrose has not held up in experimental testing.
Better Alternatives
If you’re looking for a liquid sweetener, honey and maple syrup both provide small amounts of antioxidants and minerals that brown rice syrup lacks, without the arsenic exposure. They still raise blood sugar and still contain plenty of calories, but they at least bring something to the table beyond empty sweetness. Blackstrap molasses offers meaningful amounts of iron, calcium, and potassium.
If your concern is specifically avoiding fructose due to fructose malabsorption or similar digestive issues, glucose syrup made from corn or other non-rice sources achieves the same goal without the arsenic risk. For people watching their overall sugar intake, the best move is simply using less of any sweetener rather than swapping one for another.