White Rice Linked to Diabetes Risk

People who frequently eat white rice are at greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those who eat less than one serving a month. But rice isn't all bad: Eating the brown variety lowers the likelihood of developing the disease, new research shows. Replacing white rice serving-for-serving with brown rice lowers diabetes risk by 16%, and substituting whole grains—unprocessed grains such as wheat, oats, and barley as well as brown rice—cuts the risk by a whopping 36%.

But eating five servings of white rice a week raises the risk by 17%, as compared to those who eat it just once a month, reports Reuters. "From a public health point of view, replacing refined grains such as white rice by whole grains, including brown rice, should be recommended to facilitate the prevention of type 2 diabetes, " the researchers conclude.
(More brown rice stories.)