Posted by kathryn in Carbohydrates and Q & A Thursday

The next Question in Q & A Thursday is from Andrew and it’s all about rice:

is rice a low fat, low salt, healthy grain, or a carbohydrate-containing food that causes health problems with over consumption?

There’s no black and white answer to this one – it depends on how much you eat and your current health.

The nutritional content of rice

While the primary constituent of rice is carbohydrate, it does contain other nutrients:

• Small amounts of protein
• Fibre
• Trace amounts of some minerals, including magnesium, potassium and phosphorous
• Small amounts of folate
• Rice is very low in fat
• Provided you don’t add salt while cooking, rice is low in sodium
• 100g of cooked rice contains just over 500kJ.

Can you include rice in your diet?

I’m not a follower of the Atkins diet and I don’t believe in completely cutting out all bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. Carbohydrates provide energy, that fuels our bodies and most of these foods also contain important micro-nutrients, as well as fibre.

However, most people eat too much of these grain-based carbohydrate foods, including rice. Centreing a whole meal around these staples, contributes a lot of kilojoules to your diet. If you’re a heavy-duty exerciser this is okay, but not so good if you’re living a sedentary lifestyle. Given the rates of overweight and obese people, most would be wise to limit how much of these foods they eat.

Glycemic effect

Most varieties of rice have a high glycemic index (or GI), which means they cause a big spike in blood sugar levels soon after the meal. Again, this is good for athletes on the day of a race, but not for everyone else. The rice with the lowest GI is basmati rice. For more on why this is, take a look at why does jasmine rice have such a huge GI?

To sum up

• Rice can be part of a healthy diet
• Choose the lower GI rices, like basmati rice and brown rice
• BUT, limit how much rice and other starchy-carbohydate foods you’re eating
• Instead, centre your meal around the protein and vegetable components, making the starchy carbohydrate no more than one-quarter of your plate.

Caution: if you have a family history or have been diagnosed with diabetes, metabolic syndrome (syndrome X), pre-diabetes, PCOS, etc, then you would also be wise to limit the total amount of rice you eat and stick to basmati rice only.

What’s Q & A Thursday?

This post is part of Q & A Thursday – a weekly burst of blogging, where you get to dictate the subject matter. Q & A Thursday is all about simple, practical and sensible answers to food, diet and health dilemmas sent in by readers. If you have a question you’d like answered, then either leave a comment or send me an email. For more information you can take a look at the Q & A Thursday archives.

Photograph by Brother O’Mara under the terms of a creative commons license

31 May, 2007