Published : Saturday, March 17, 2012 00:00 Article Views : 177 Written by : AFP
PARIS: Health researchers said on Thursday that they had found a troubling link between higher consumption of rice and Type 2 diabetes, a disease that is becoming an epidemic in some countries.
Further work is needed to probe the apparent association and diets that are notoriously high in sugar and fats should remain on the no-go list, they cautioned.
What weve found is that white rice is likely to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, especially at high consumption levels such as in Asian populations, Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health told Agence France-Presse.
But at the same time, people should pay close attention to the other things they eat, Sun said.
Its very important to address not just a single food, but the whole pattern of consumption, he added.
In the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Suns team said that the link emerged from an analysis of four previously published studies, carried out in China, Japan, Australia and the United States.
These studies followed 350,000 people over a timescale from four to 22 years. More than 13,000 people developed Type 2 diabetes.
In the studies carried out in China and Japan, those who ate the most rice were 55 percent likelier to develop the disease than those who ate the least.
In the United States and Australia, where consumption of rice is far lower, the difference was 12 percent.
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White rice linked to diabetes
