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At the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers have found that replacing white rice with brown rice can lower the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by up to 16 percent.
The researchers took results from 3 large health studies and tested over 190,000 patients. By comparing the people who consumed 5 or more portions of white rice a week to the risk of those who consumed rice less than once a month, they found that the patients who were eating white rice often had a higher chance of getting diabetes. In fact, they had 17 percent higher chance than the other group.
They then compared it with the data from those patients who consumed brown rice twice a week or more. Their research showed that this group had even less risk than those who rarely ate white rice. The chances of getting diabetes were then dropped by another 11 percent.
Brown rice is the whole grain and is served as nature made it. White rice is made by taking the bran and most of the germ away. Therefore brown rice has a lower GI index and the body takes longer to process the food. The rise in blood sugar and energy levels is much slower in brown rice compared to refined grains of white rice which is digested fast and makes the blood levels rocket sky high.
“The high glycemic index of white rice consumption is likely to be the consequences of disrupting the physical and botanical structure of rice grains during the refining process – in which almost all the bran and some of the germ are removed,” says Dr. Qi Sun, the head of the study.
“The other consequence of the refining process includes loss of fiber, vitamins, magnesium and other minerals, many of which may be protective factors for diabetic risk.”
