The Low-Down on Brown rice

You’ve heard it….eat more brown rice! Its got more fiber, more vitamins. And gosh, it’s just so easy to make. According to researchers, several servings of brown rice each week could help reduce your risk of getting type 2 diabetes, a condition that’s on the rise in children and adults. But if you’re about to load your plate with brown rice, there’s something else to consider. Rice plants absorb arsenic – a toxic metal once used in pesticides, and still used in wood treatments. Arsenic is detoxified in the liver, but if levels are high enough it can cause cancer. So should you avoid brown rice? Or can you incorporate it safely into your diet? Can’t a person just enjoy a good stir-fry?

Brown rice – a bowl of good health

Nature packages the perfect blend of B vitamins in rice. People (and chickens) who ate white rice developed beri-beri, a disease causing nerve and skin problems. The disease was “cured” when they returned to eating brown rice. This led to the practice of spraying a few of the B-vitamins onto white rice, to help prevent the obvious signs of beri-beri. But it’s likely we still have some nutritional imbalance from eating excessive amounts of refined rice.