EATING WHITE rice may be linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers have found. A review of four studies involving about 350,000 people, found the more white rice people ate, the higher their chance of developing the condition. Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School looked at two studies in Asian people and two in Western populations.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, the authors said: “We found that higher white rice consumption was associated with a significantly elevated risk of type 2 diabetes. This association seems to be stronger for Asians than for western populations.”
Asian people tended to have a much higher white rice intake than those in the west, averaging three to four servings a day compared with one or two servings a week. The researchers said that for every extra daily serving of white rice, the risk rose by about 11 per cent.