Eating More Rice Could Help Fight Obesity

Eating rice may help prevent obesity, research suggests.

Experts found that people following a Japanese or Asian-style diet based on rice were less likely to be obese than those living in countries where rice consumption was low.

Researchers said low-carbohydrate diets – which limit rice – are a popular weight-loss strategy in developed countries but the effect of rice on obesity has been unclear.

They looked at rice consumption in terms of grams per day per person and calorie intake in 136 countries.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/eating-more-rice-could-help-fight-obesity-study-suggests?srnd=premium-asia

Or could it be that the Japanese don't eat anywhere near the amount of rubbish that people in western countries eat?


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Should I worry about arsenic in my rice?


Rice however, is different from other crops, because it's grown under flooded conditions. This makes the arsenic locked in the soil more readily available, meaning that more can be absorbed into the rice grains.


This is why rice contains about 10-20 times more arsenic than other cereal crops. But are these levels high enough to do us any real harm?

"The only thing I can really equate it to is smoking," says Prof Andy Meharg of Queen's University Belfast, who has been studying arsenic for decades. "If you take one or two cigarettes per day, your risks are going to be a lot less than if you're smoking 30 or 40 cigarettes a day. It's dose-dependent - the more you eat, the higher your risk is."

He believes that the current legislation isn't strict enough, and that more needs to be done to protect those who eat a lot of rice.

Eating a couple of portions of rice a week isn't putting an adult like me at high risk, but Prof Meharg is concerned about children and babies.


"We know that low levels of arsenic impact immune development, they impact growth development, they impact IQ development," he says.


https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38910848