Type 2 Diabetes and Rice

Rice is a food staple in many cultures and communities throughout the world. But, daily consumption of white rice is associated with an increased risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes, a serious but preventable lifestyle disease.

Luckily, if you like to eat rice, you can reduce your risk of Diabetes by at least 10% with one easy dietary change that does not involve a major dietary upheaval. Simply substitute brown rice for white rice, without even altering the amount of rice you eat.

Brown rice has a slightly nuttier taste than white rice and a slightly coarser texture, but one usually adapts rapidly to the changes.  In fact, after a while, many people prefer the taste of brown rice over the blandness of white rice. Transitioning from white rice to brown rice can easily be aided by eating a mixture of brown with white rice first. And, with the newer rice cookers, cooking brown rice is just as easy as cooking white rice - just  push the “brown rice” button on the control panel.

Healthy Swap: eat brown rice instead of white

Newer rice cookers have a brown rice button

In addition to the favorable lower sugar effect, brown rice has other nutritious advantages over white rice. Brown rice provides increased fiber content and increased amounts of beneficial vitamins and minerals. Why? During the milling process to turn brown rice into white rice, the outer husk of the brown rice kernel, which contains the fiber, vitamins, and minerals, is removed, causing the resulting white rice to lose much of its nutrition.

But what about those of you who eat bread and potatoes rather than rice as your major dietary starch? Similar findings would probably result in studies comparing whole wheat bread to white bread or unpeeled potatoes to peeled potatoes. So eat "Whole and Brown” as the healthier choice.

Enjoy!
Takenori

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024208/