What Are the Benefits of Eating Rice & Daal Together?

For diners who are newly enthused about Indian food, the term "daal" can be confusing. It's transliterated in several spellings -- dal, dahl and dhal among them -- and it can have two meaning: One, lentils or various small beans and peas that have been skinned and split to make a lentil-like shape, or two, a soupy stew or sauce made from those legumes. Both are commonly served with rice, a happy combination that offers many health benefits.

Combining Proteins

Proteins are made up of 20 different amino acids, most of which the body can manufacture for itself. But there are nine that your body can't manufacture, and you must get these from the diet. Those nine, called "essential" amino acids, are distributed unevenly in plant foods. As it happens, lentils and other legumes are high in lysine -- the amino acid that rice is missing -- while rice and other grains are high in the sulfur-based amino acids missing from legumes. Any combination of approximately 20 percent lentils to 80 percent rice has all the necessary acids, making a complete protein.

A Shot of Fiber

In Indian restaurants, daal is typically served over a white long-grain rice, such as basmati. Well-prepared white rice is culinarily versatile, but it doesn't contain a whole lot of dietary fiber. A 1-cup portion boasts only 600 milligrams of dietary fiber, just 2 percent of your daily value. Adding 1/4 cup of lentils to that rice -- just 4 tablespoons -- provides an additional 3.6 grams, or 16 percent of your DV, for a total of 18 percent. A cup of brown rice contains 3.5 grams of fiber, or 14 percent of the DV, forming an even more potent combination with your lentils.

Other Nutritional Benefits

Lentils might do the heavy lifting where dietary fiber is concerned, but rice is a more equal partner in overall nutrition. A cup of white rice contains 37 percent of your DV for manganese, 17 percent of your day's selenium and lesser quantities of several minerals and B vitamins. Four tablespoons of lentils provide an additional 12 percent of the DV for manganese; 8 percent of your iron, phosphorus and copper for the day; and 20 percent of the DV for folate. Brown rice is an excellent source of magnesium, phosphorus, copper, manganese and selenium and is also rich in several of the B vitamins.

A Low-Key Classic

Aside from the nutritional benefits, there's one other important benefit to combining rice and daal. They simply taste good together. Dishes of rice and lentils, usually perfumed with spices and caramelized onions, are a staple from the Middle East all the way to India. In its other incarnation as a highly spiced stew of lentils or similar legumes, daal brings bright flavors, rich aromas and often a vivid, visually striking color contrast to the simple dish of rice.