Today’s Health and Nutrition Bite: More Brown, Less White

White rice is essentially brown rice that has been processed to remove the outer bran and germ parts of the rice. This is why brown rice is considered a “whole grain” and white rice is not. There’s a lot of research showing that eating more whole grains can help you reduce your risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and overweight. One of the reasons for this appears to be that eating refined grains leads to a higher spike in blood sugars than eating whole grains. This higher response is measured using a system known as the glycemic index (GI), and a higher-GI diet has been shown in many studies to be linked with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

We don’t eat all that much brown rice here in the United States, although if you’ve been following Dr. Gourmet for a while, you know that I recommend switching from white rice to brown rice as well as from plain pasta to whole wheat pasta. Researchers at Harvard Medical School noted that our rice consumption is rising, however, and decided to look specifically at brown vs. white rice with regard to the risk of type 2 diabetes. More Brown, Less White