Rice

For several years, researchers in Boston followed 39,765 men and 157,463 women with no history of type 2 diabetes. During a cumulative 3,318,196 person-years of follow-up, 10,507 people developed type 2 diabetes. After adjusting for age and other factors, the study found that those who ate two or more servings of brown rice per week had an 11 percent lower risk of diabetes compared to those who ate brown rice less than once a month. Conversely, those eating white rice five or more times per week increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 17 percent. Researchers recommended replacing white rice in the diet with brown rice – or, even better, with a variety of whole grains.
Presented at the American Heart Association’s Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference, March 3, 2010.

Advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) are increasingly implicated in the complications of diabetes. A study from the University of Georgia Neutraceutical Research Libraries showed that sorghum brans with a high phenolic content and high anti-oxidant properties inhibit protein glycation, whereas wheat, rice or oat bran, and low-phenolic sorghum bran did not. These results suggest that “certain varieties of  sorghum bran may affect critical biological processes that are important in diabetes and insulin resistance.”
Phytotherapy Research. 2008 Aug;22(8):1052-6

In Japan, six men and five women with impaired fasting glucose (pre-diabetes) or type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to eat either white rice or sprouted brown rice three times a day. After a two-week washout, subjects switched groups. Researchers reported that “blood concentrations of fasting blood glucose, fructosamine, serum total cholesterol and traicylglycerol were favorably improved on the sprouted brown rice diet but not on the white rice diet” suggesting that diets including sprouted brown rice may help control blood sugar.
Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology, April 2008; 54(2):163-8.

At the Department of Food and Nutrition at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korean researchers randomly assigned forty overweight adult women to two groups. For six weeks, one group ate meals containing white rice, while the other consumed otherwise-identical meals with a mix of black and brown rice. While both groups showed significant reductions in weight, BMI and body fat, the whole grain rice group surpassed the white rice group in all three measures. The whole grain group also saw an increase in HDL (good) cholesterol and in antioxidant activity.
Nutrition Research. February 2008; 28(2): 66-71.

In a Korean study, rats on a high-cholesterol diet were divided into four groups, a control group and three experimental groups which were fed (1) sprouted giant embryonic rice, (2) giant embryonic rice, or (3) conventional brown rice.  (Giant embryonic rice is rice with a larger germ than normal.)  Rats fed the sprouted rice saw a rise in their plasma HDL-cholesterol (“good cholesterol”) and other markers that led researchers to conclude that “consumption of germinated giant embryonic rice is effective in lowering atherosclerosis cardiovascular disease risk.”
Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2007; 51(6):519-26. Epub 2007 Dec 20.