White Rice and Diabetes

Mar 19, 2012 Editorial

Guyana is in line with a troubling increase in diabetes across the globe – almost qualifying as an epidemic. Diabetes affects nearly 350 million adults worldwide. Because of the insidious nature of the disease in precipitating a host of ancillary internal organ failures – especially renal and cardiovascular – that can prove fatal, there are several lines of research to reduce its incidence. Overall, it has long been accepted that diabetes is caused by a combination of factors – genetic, type of food consumed and exercise.
In fact there is a large body of opinion that refuses to define diabetes as a ‘disease’ since it can evidently be avoided by a proper combination of proper eating and exercise from an early age. Basically in diabetes, insulin – which controls the amount of glucose that is retained in the blood rather than absorbed into the cells where it is utilised – is produced in decreasing quantities.
The glucose in the blood is passed out in the urine. One very visible effect of diabetes is reduced blood circulation to the feet, which leads to a reduced ability to deliver the body’s defensive arsenal to fight infections. Amputations of the infected feet become necessary in many instances.
A study by the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston just published in the British Medical Journal should be of interest to Guyanese.
Each serving of white rice a day increases the risk of Type II diabetes by 11 per cent. The conclusion was based on a meta-analysis of 352,384 people who were followed up for four to 22 years. The participants were from China, Japan, the United States and Australia.
A “positive association” between white rice intake and increased risk of diabetes was found only in the case of the two Asian countries, where rice is a staple food. “This association seems to be stronger for Asians than for Western populations,” the authors said.
People who ate the most white rice were more than 1.5 times likely to have diabetes than people who ate the least amount of rice. For every 5.5 ounce-serving of white rice a person ate each day, the risk rose 10 percent.
White rice is the dominant form of rice eaten in the world. Machines produce its polished look by hulling and milling, leaving a grain that is predominantly starch.
The polishing removes most of the nutrients found in the bran such as insoluble fibre, magnesium, vitamins, and lignans (a group of chemical compounds acting as antioxidants). Insoluble fibre and magnesium, for instance, have been found to lower the risk of Type II diabetes.
Unlike brown rice, polished rice has a high glycaemic index (an indicator of glucose-raising effect of a food) and is a major contributor of dietary glycaemic load. Higher dietary glycaemic load is generally associated with the increased risk of diabetes.
Hence, the harmful effects of polishing are two-pronged — it removes the nutrients that would cut the risk of diabetes and at the same time pushes up the glycaemic index, thus increasing the risk of the disease.
Study author Dr. Qi Sun, said that eating white rice could cause a sudden spike in blood sugar. Because white rice is rapidly converted to sugar, it could mean a person gets hungry sooner than if they ate a low-sugar food like porridge.
This effect could lead to people overeating, another risk factor for type-2 diabetes. High consumers of white rice aren’t the only ones at risk. Sun said starchy carbohydrates such as white bread and white potatoes likely have the same effect if eaten enough.
The researchers stressed however that diabetes is not the result of any single factor – It’s what we eat, what we do, and our genes. Since we can’t change our genes, it’s important to think about the role food plays into our culture.
Guyanese use approximate the same Asian 3-4 servings of rice a day on average: our risk of developing diabetes is comparable to theirs. We should switch to brown rice, other whole grains and exercise.

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White Rice and Diabetes

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