White rice, brown rice, diabetes.

Dr Qi Sun and colleagues have just published a study to the effect that white rice raises your chance of type 2 diabetes while brown rice lowers it.

The researchers drew from existing studies of health professionals, covering nearly 200,000 people, 80% of them women, in the US.

Food consumption was recorded from food diaries and questionnaires, along with other lifestyle factors.

After screening out the other factors, white rice at 5+ servings per week raised the type 2 diabetes risk 17% above those eating less than 1 serving per month.

Eating brown rice at 2+ servings per week reduced the risk of diabetes by 11% compared to those eating it less than once a month.

Brown rice is partly milled, whereas white rice starts exactly the same as brown, but has much more stripped away in the refining process.

The authors estimated that diabetes risk would decrease even further by moving to whole grains.

The study population is mainly of European descent, so the findings may not apply to other backgrounds.