Scientists from Lanzhou University found that white rice intake is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes.
It is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. White rice is the food that more than half of the world’s population depends on.
In type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or doesn’t use insulin well. Too much glucose then stays in your blood, and not enough reaches your cells.
Many people think white rice is an “empty” or “bad” carb since it loses nutrients when the bran and germ are removed.
White rice intake can strongly increase the glycemic load in eaters, which means its carbs convert more quickly into blood sugar than brown rice.
White rice can bring some negative health effects. However, how white rice is linked to negative health outcomes remains unclear.
In the current study, researchers examined the association between white rice intake and the risk of cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes.
They included 23 studies that examined more than 1.5 million people.
For the risk of type 2 diabetes, the team found the highest intake of white rice was linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes compared to the lowest intake of white rice. In addition, the effect was higher in women.
The researchers also found that every additional 150 grams of white rice intake per day were linked to a 6% greater risk of type 2 diabetes.
The team found no strong associations between white rice intake and the risk of heart disease, cancer, and metabolic syndrome.
These results suggest that white rice intake is linked to type 2 diabetes risk.
However, low to very low certainty of evidence suggested that no associations between white rice intake and heart disease and cancer outcomes.
The team says more studies are needed to strengthen the evidence.
The research was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition and conducted by Honghao Lai et al.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that eating more eggs is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and green tea could help reduce death risk in type 2 diabetes
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about a high-protein diet linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by 30%.
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