White Rice Increase Risks of Type 2 Diabetes

I am very Pinoy.  I love eating rice.  And it’s always white rice.  May extra rice pa!  However, recent study that was published in the British Medical Journal last March 2012 showed that eating white rice regularly raises the risk for type 2 diabetes.  The numbers says that a large bowl (5.6oz / 158g) of rice being consumed a day is associated with an 11 per cent increased risk.

The study was conducted by led by Emily Hu and Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) research.  The researchers reviewed four earlier studies involving more than 352,000 people from China, Japan, the United States, and Australia who were tracked between four and 22 years.

The researchers found that people who ate about three to four servings of rice everyday were 1.5 times more likely to have diabetes.  The link was stronger for people in Asian countries, who eat an average of three to four servings of white rice per day.

White rice is the predominant type of rice eaten worldwide and has high GI values. High GI diets are associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.  White rice also lacks nutrients found in brown rice that may lower risk of diabetes, like fiber and magnesium.

The authors recommend eating whole grains instead of refined carbohydrates to help slow down the global diabetes epidemic.

 

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