Q & A Thurs: can rice be part of a healthy diet?
Posted by kathryn in Grains
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
Comments
oh what a great question. i often get tripped up on carbs, because while i feel like i do have a healthy, low-fat, high nutrient diet, i do eat a lot of carbs (rice and gluten free rice pasta being the main culprits).
for a while i was doing well with substiuting the traditional carb-based evening meal with more protein and veg based meals, but i think the problem (for me) is that carbs are just so EASY. to cook and to use in recipes.
i once had a friend tell me that eating white rice was “as bad as eating sugar” and i hotly denied it! but now i realise, she was probably referring to the GI of rice (although surely it’s not quite on the same level as sugar??). and i wonder how brown rice compares… perhaps a topic for next Thursday!
Hi there Lindsey, thanks for your comment. I don’t think your alone in getting tripped up by carbs – we seem to have become more and more used to planning our meals around the grain component.
You’ve added some good layers to the questions around the healthyness of rice and I’ll gt to them on the next Q & A Thursday.
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