White Rice may up Diabetes Risk

They say exercise and a healthful diet can reduce your risk of diabetes. But what is a healthful diet? What foods should you eat and which should you avoid?

Eating high amounts of white rice may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, especially in Chinese and Japanese populations.

Limit your white rice consumption.

In a recent study, Qi Sun, Ph.D., of Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues wanted to see if there was a link between how much white rice people ate and their risk of type 2 diabetes.

Their findings show that Asians (specifically Chinese and Japanese populations) who ate the most white rice had a 55 percent higher risk of diabetes compared to Asians who ate the least amount of white rice.

Similarly, people from Western populations with the highest rice intake had a greater risk of diabetes than those who ate less.

The researchers were also able to figure out how much each serving of white rice would increase a person's risk of diabetes.

For every serving per day of white rice, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased by 11 percent.

This meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies involved more than 352,000 participants with 13,284 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

The results are published in BMJ.