Rice currently feeds almost half the human population

making it the single most important staple food in the world,

but a meta-analysis of 7 cohort studies

following 350,000 people for up to 20 years,

found that higher consumption of white rice

was associated with a significantly increased risk of type 2 diabetes,

especially in Asian populations.

They estimated each serving per day of white rice

was associated with an 11% increase in risk of diabetes,

which may help explain why the association

was even stronger in Asia where they eat much more rice.

This could explain why China has almost

the same diabetes rates as we do.

They have at about 10%, we’re at about 11%,

despite seven times less obesity in China.

Japan has 8 times less obesity than we do,

yet may have a higher incidence of newly diagnosed

diabetes cases than we do,

9 per a thousand, compared to our 8.

They’re skinnier and still may have more diabetes,

maybe because of all the white rice they eat.

Just like eating whole fruit is associated with a lower risk of diabetes,

whereas eating fruit processed into juice may not just be neutral

but actually increases diabetes risk.

Eating whole grains, like whole wheat bread or brown rice

is associated with lower risk of diabetes,

whereas eating white rice, a processed grain,

may not just be neutral but actually increases diabetes risk.

White rice consumption does not appear associated

with increased risk of heart attack or stroke, though,

which is a relief after this earlier study in China

suggested a connection with stroke.

But do we want to eat a food that’s just neutral

regarding some of our leading causes of death,

when we can eat something associated with a lower risk

of diabetes, heart attack, stroke, and weight gain?

But if you look at the Cornell-Oxford-China Project,

rural plant-based diets centered around rice were associated

with relatively low risk of the so-called diseases of affluence,

which includes diabetes.

Maybe Asians just genetically don’t get the same

blood sugar spike when they eat white rice?

No, if anything people of Chinese ethnicity

get higher blood sugar spikes.

The rise in these diseases of affluence in China

over the last half century has been blamed in part

on the tripling of the consumption of animal source foods.

The upsurge in diabetes has been most dramatic,

and it’s mostly just happened over the last decade.

That crazy 9.7% diabetes prevalence figure that rivals ours is new—

they appeared to have one of the lowest diabetes rates in the world in the year 2000.

So what happened to their diets in the last 20 years or so?

Oil consumption went up about 20%,

pork consumption alone went up 40%,

and rice consumption dropped about 30%.

So diabetes rates were skyrocketing,

rice consumption was going down,

so maybe it’s the animal products and junk food that are the problem.

Yes, brown rice is better than white rice,

but cut to stop the mounting Asian epidemic,

maybe we should focus removing the cause—

the toxic Western diet.

That would be consistent with data showing

animal protein and fat consumption

associated with increased diabetes risk.

But that doesn’t explain this.

If the rise in meat consumption is to blame,

then why do the biggest recent studies in Japan and China

associate white rice intake with diabetes?

The answer to this may be that animal protein is making the rice worse.

If you feed people mashed white potatoes,

a high glycemic food like white rice,

this is how much insulin your pancreas has to pump out

to keep your blood sugars in check.

But what if you added some tunafish?

Tuna’s got no carbs, no sugar, no starch.

Wouldn’t make a difference, right?

Or maybe it would be even lower than the mashed potato spike,

by lowering the glycemic load of the whole meal,

but instead you get this.

Twice the insulin spike.

Same with white flour spaghetti, and white flour spaghetti with meat.

The addition of animal protein makes the pancreas work twice as hard.

You can do it with straight sugar water.

If you do like a glucose challenge test to test for diabetes,

where you drink a certain amount of sugar-

this is the kind of spike in insulin you get,

but if you take in the exact same amount of sugar,

but with some meat added - you get this.

And the more meat you add, the worse it gets.

Just adding a little meat to carbs doesn’t seem to do much,

but once you get up to like a third of a chicken breast’s worth,

you can elicit a significantly increased surge of insulin.

This may help explain why those eating plant-based diets

have such low diabetes rates,

because animal protein can markedly potentiate the insulin secretion

triggered by carbohydrate ingestion.