Does Eating Brown Rice Lower Diabetes Risk?

June 15, 2010— -- White or brown rice might be a matter of taste. But people who substitute brown rice for white rice for health reasons may be onto something, a new study from Harvard University implies.

Yet doctors warn that there's more to this effect than the nutrition in rice alone.

Researchers drew on data from over 200,000 subjects and found that those who ate five or more servings of white rice a week had a 17 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with those who rarely ate white rice.

What's more, they found that those who ate brown rice regularly were overall less likely to develop diabetes.

With those results, researchers estimated that subbing in a few servings a week of white rice with brown would result in a 16 percent decrease in diabetes risk.

But diet and diabetes experts say these results may have more to do with type of person who tends to prefer brown rice than how the food itself affects health.

"Maybe people who eat brown rice are more health conscious," said Dr. Charles Clark, professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. Because the study can only gauge associations between lifestyle choices and later disease, it's impossible to tell whether it's the rice that makes a difference or some other shared quality among brown rice eaters, he said.

Indeed, researchers found that brown rice eaters as a group tended to be more physically active, leaner, less likely to smoke, and perhaps most importantly, had a higher intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains -- all choices that help lower risk of developing diabetes.

"I think whole grains may be the big player and not brown rice alone," says Carla Wolper, a researcher at the N.Y. Obesity Research Center.

But making the switch from white to brown rice may be a relatively painless way for Americans to incorporate more whole grains in their diet, says Dr. Walter Willet, a co-author on the study. This was one of the reasons researchers decided to zero in on this particular grain.