Is white rice bad for me? Can I make it lower GI or healthier?
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Rice is a culinary staple in Australia and around the world.
It might seem like a given that brown rice is healthier than white and official public health resources often recommend brown rice instead of white as a “healthy swap”.
But Australians definitely prefer white rice over brown. So, what’s the difference, and what do we need to know when choosing rice?
What makes rice white or brown?
Rice “grains” are technically seeds. A complete, whole rice seed is called a “paddy”, which has multiple parts:
- the “hull” is the hard outer layer which protects the seed
- the “bran”, which is a softer protective layer containing the seed coat
- the “germ” or the embryo, which is the part of the seed that would develop into a new plant if was germinated
- the “endosperm”, which makes up most of the seed and is essentially the store of nutrients that feeds the developing plant as a seed grows into a plant.
Rice needs to be processed for humans to eat it.
Along with cleaning and drying, the hard hulls are removed since we can’t digest them. This is how brown rice is made, with the other three parts of the rice remaining intact. This means brown rice is regarded as a “wholegrain”.
White rice, however, is a “refined” grain, as it is further polished to remove the bran and germ, leaving just the endosperm. This is a mechanical and not a chemical process.
What’s the difference, nutritionally?
Keeping the bran and the germ means brown rice has more magnesium, phosphorus, potassium B vitamins (niacin, folate, riboflavin and pyridoxine), iron, zinc and fibre.
The germ and the bran also contain more bioactives (compounds in foods that aren’t essential nutrients but have health benefits), like oryzanols and phenolic compounds which have antioxidant effects.
But that doesn’t mean white rice is just empty calories. It still contains vitamins, minerals and some fibre, and is low in fat and salt, and is naturally gluten-free.
White and brown rice actually have similar amounts of calories (or kilojoules) and total carbohydrates.
There are studies that show eating more white rice is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. But it is difficult to know if this is down to the rice itself, or other related factors such as socioeconomic variables or other dietary patterns.
What about the glycaemic index?
The higher fibre means brown rice has a lower glycaemic index (GI), meaning it raises blood sugar levels more slowly. But this is highly variable between different rices within the white and brown categories.
The GI system uses low (less than 55), medium (55–70) and high (above 70) categories. Brown rices fall into the low and medium categories. White rices fall in the medium and high.
There are specific low-GI types available for both white and brown types. You can also lower the GI of rice by heating and then cooling it. This process converts some of the “available carbohydrates” into “resistant starch”, which then functions like dietary fibre.
Are there any benefits to white rice?
The taste and textural qualities of white and brown rices differ. White rice tends to have a softer texture and more mild or neutral flavour. Brown rice has a chewier texture and nuttier flavour.
So, while you can technically substitute brown rice into most recipes, the experience will be different. Or other ingredients may need to be added or changed to create the desired texture.
Removing more of the outer layers may also reduce the levels of contaminants such as pesticides.
We don’t just eat rice
Comparing white and brown rice seems like an easy way to boost nutritional value. But just because one food (brown rice) is more nutrient-dense doesn’t make the other food (white rice) “bad”.
Ultimately, it’s not often that we eat just rice, so we don’t need the rice we choose to be the perfect one. Rice is typically the staple base of a more complex dish. So, it’s probably more important to think about what we eat with rice.
Adding vegetables and lean proteins to rice-based dishes can easily add the micronutrients, bioactives and fibre that white rice is comparatively lacking, and this can likely do more to contribute to diet quality than eating brown rice instead.
Emma Beckett, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Innovation – School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For – by Dr. Richard Schwartz
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As self-therapy approaches go, the title here could be read two ways: as pop-psychology fluff, or a suggestion of something deeper. And, while written in a way to make it accessible to all, we’re happy to report the content consists of serious therapeutic ideas, presented clearly.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a large, internationally recognized, and popular therapeutic approach. It’s also an approach that lends itself quite well to self-therapy, as this book illustrates.
Dr. Schwartz kicks off by explaining not IFS, but the problem that it solves… We (most of us, anyway) have over the course of our lives tried to plug the gaps in our own unmet psychological needs. And, that can cause resentment, strain, and can even be taken out on others if we’re not careful.
The real meat of the book, however, is in its illustrative explanations of how IFS works, and can be applied by an individual. The goal is to recognize all the parts that make us who we are, understand what they need in order to be at peace, and give them that. Spoiler: most what they will need is just being adequately heard, rather than locked in a box untended.
One of the benefits of using this book for self-therapy, of course, is that it requires a lot less vulnerability with a third party.
But, speaking of which, what of these intimate relationships the subtitle of the book referenced? Mostly the benefits to such come from a “put your own oxygen mask on first” angle… but the book does also cover discussions between intimate partners, and approaches to love, including what the author calls “courageous love”.
Bottom line: this is a great book if you want to do some “spring-cleaning of the soul” and live a little more lightly as a result.
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Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners – by Melissa Jefferson
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For some of us, avoiding inflammatory food is a particularly important consideration. For all of us, it should be anyway.
Sometimes, we know what’s good against inflammation, and we know what’s bad for inflammation… but we might struggle to come up with full meals of just-the-good, especially if we want to not repeat meals every day!
The subtitle is slightly misleading! It says “Countless Easy and Delicious Recipes”, but this depends on your counting ability. Melissa Jefferson gives us 150 anti-inflammatory recipes, which can be combined for a 12-week meal plan. We think that’s enough to at least call it “many”, though.
First comes an introduction to inflammation, inflammatory diseases, and a general overview of what to eat / what to avoid. After that, the main part of the book is divided into sections:
- Breakfasts (20)
- Soups (15)
- Beans & Grains (20)
- Meat (20)
- Fish (20)
- Vegetables (20)
- Sides (15)
- Snacks (10)
- Desserts (10)
If you’ve a knowledge of anti-inflammation diet already, you may be wondering how “Meat” and “Desserts” works.
- The meat section is a matter of going light on the meat and generally favoring white meats, and certainly unprocessed.
- Of course, if you are vegetarian or vegan, substitutions may be in order anyway.
As for the dessert section? A key factor is that fruits and chocolate are anti-inflammatory foods! Just a matter of not having desserts full of sugar, flour, etc.
The recipes themselves are simple and to-the-point, with ingredients, method, and nutritional values. Just the way we like it.
All in all, a fine addition to absolutely anyone’s kitchen library… And doubly so if you have a particular reason to focus on avoiding/reducing inflammation!
Get your copy of “Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners” from Amazon today!
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Body by Science – by Dr. Doug McGuff & John Little
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The idea that you’ll get a re-sculpted body at 12 minutes per week is a bold claim, isn’t it? Medical Doctor Doug McGuff and bodybuilder John Little team up to lay out their case. So, how does it stand up to scrutiny?
First, is it “backed by rigorous research” as claimed? Yes… with caveats.
The book uses a large body of scientific literature as its foundation, and that weight of evidence does support this general approach:
- Endurance cardio isn’t very good at burning fat
- Muscle, even just having it without using it much, burns fat to maintain it
- To that end, muscle can be viewed as a fat-burning asset
- Muscle can be grown quickly with short bursts of intense exercise once per week
Why once per week? The most relevant muscle fibers take about that long to recover, so doing it more often will undercut gains.
So, what are the caveats?
The authors argue for slow reps of maximally heavy resistance work sufficient to cause failure in about 90 seconds. However, most of the studies cited for the benefits of “brief intense exercise” are for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT involves “sprints” of exercise. It doesn’t have to be literally running, but for example maxing out on an exercise bike for 30 seconds, slowing for 60, maxing out for 30, etc. Or in the case of resistance work, explosive (fast!) concentric movements and slow eccentric movements, to work fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers, respectively.
What does this mean for the usefulness of the book?
- Will it sculpt your body as described in the blurb? Yes, this will indeed grow your muscles with a minimal expenditure of time
- Will it improve your body’s fat-burning metabolism? Yes, this will indeed turn your body into a fat-burning machine
- Will it improve your “complete fitness”? No, if you want to be an all-rounder athlete, you will still need HIIT, as otherwise anything taxing your under-worked fast-twitch muscle fibers will exhaust you quickly.
Bottom line: read this book if you want to build muscle efficiently, and make your body more efficient at burning fat. Best supplemented with at least some cardio, though!
Click here to check out Body by Science, and get re-sculpting yours!
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Evidence doesn’t support spinal cord stimulators for chronic back pain – and they could cause harm
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In an episode of ABC’s Four Corners this week, the use of spinal cord stimulators for chronic back pain was brought into question.
Spinal cord stimulators are devices implanted surgically which deliver electric impulses directly to the spinal cord. They’ve been used to treat people with chronic pain since the 1960s.
Their design has changed significantly over time. Early models required an external generator and invasive surgery to implant them. Current devices are fully implantable, rechargeable and can deliver a variety of electrical signals.
However, despite their long history, rigorous experimental research to test the effectiveness of spinal cord stimulators has only been conducted this century. The findings don’t support their use for treating chronic pain. In fact, data points to a significant risk of harm.
What does the evidence say?
One of the first studies used to support the effectiveness of spinal cord stimulators was published in 2005. This study looked at patients who didn’t get relief from initial spinal surgery and compared implantation of a spinal cord stimulator to a repeat of the spinal surgery.
Although it found spinal cord stimulation was the more effective intervention for chronic back pain, the fact this study compared the device to something that had already failed once is an obvious limitation.
Later studies provided more useful evidence. They compared spinal cord stimulation to non-surgical treatments or placebo devices (for example, deactivated spinal cord stimulators).
A 2023 Cochrane review of the published comparative studies found nearly all studies were restricted to short-term outcomes (weeks). And while some studies appeared to show better pain relief with active spinal cord stimulation, the benefits were small, and the evidence was uncertain.
Only one high-quality study compared spinal cord stimulation to placebo up to six months, and it showed no benefit. The review concluded the data doesn’t support the use of spinal cord stimulation for people with back pain.
What about the harms?
The experimental studies often had small numbers of participants, making any estimate of the harms of spinal cord stimulation difficult. So we need to look to other sources.
A review of adverse events reported to Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration found the harms can be serious. Of the 520 events reported between 2012 and 2019, 79% were considered “severe” and 13% were “life threatening”.
We don’t know exactly how many spinal cord stimulators were implanted during this period, however this surgery is done reasonably widely in Australia, particularly in the private and workers compensation sectors. In 2023, health insurance data showed more than 1,300 spinal cord stimulator procedures were carried out around the country.
In the review, around half the reported harms were due to a malfunction of the device itself (for example, fracture of the electrical lead, or the lead moved to the wrong spot in the body). The other half involved declines in people’s health such as unexplained increased pain, infection, and tears in the lining around the spinal cord.
More than 80% of the harms required at least one surgery to correct the problem. The same study reported four out of every ten spinal cord stimulators implanted were being removed.
Chronic back pain can be debilitating. CGN089/Shutterstock High costs
The cost here is considerable, with the devices alone costing tens of thousands of dollars. Adding associated hospital and medical costs, the total cost for a single procedure averages more than $A50,000. With many patients undergoing multiple repeat procedures, it’s not unusual for costs to be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Rebates from Medicare, private health funds and other insurance schemes may go towards this total, along with out-of-pocket contributions.
Insurers are uncertain of the effectiveness of spinal cord stimulators, but because their implantation is listed on the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the devices are approved for reimbursement by the government, insurers are forced to fund their use.
Industry influence
If the evidence suggests no sustained benefit over placebo, the harms are significant and the cost is high, why are spinal cord stimulators being used so commonly in Australia? In New Zealand, for example, the devices are rarely used.
Doctors who implant spinal cord stimulators in Australia are well remunerated and funding arrangements are different in New Zealand. But the main reason behind the lack of use in New Zealand is because pain specialists there are not convinced of their effectiveness.
In Australia and elsewhere, the use of spinal cord stimulators is heavily promoted by the pain specialists who implant them, and the device manufacturers, often in unison. The tactics used by the spinal cord stimulator device industry to protect profits have been compared to tactics used by the tobacco industry.
A 2023 paper describes these tactics which include flooding the scientific literature with industry-funded research, undermining unfavourable independent research, and attacking the credibility of those who raise concerns about the devices.
It’s not all bad news
Many who suffer from chronic pain may feel disillusioned after watching the Four Corners report. But it’s not all bad news. Australia happens to be home to some of the world’s top back pain researchers who are working on safe, effective therapies.
New approaches such as sensorimotor retraining, which includes reassurance and encouragement to increase patients’ activity levels, cognitive functional therapy, which targets unhelpful pain-related thinking and behaviour, and old approaches such as exercise, have recently shown benefits in robust clinical research.
If we were to remove funding for expensive, harmful and ineffective treatments, more funding could be directed towards effective ones.
Ian Harris, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, UNSW Sydney; Adrian C Traeger, Research Fellow, Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney, and Caitlin Jones, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Exercising With Less Soreness!
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An Ancient Sports Drink & Healing Potion, Now With Modern Science?
Ginseng has many health benefits, we talked about 8 of them in this previous edition of 10almonds:
…but we’ve somehow never yet done a Monday’s Research Review for it! We must do one, one of these days. For now though, it’s Saturday’s Life Hacks, and we’re here with…
Speeding up recovery after muscle damage
We talked about this topic before too:
Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise
…which gives very good advice (including some supplements that help), but was published before the latest science that we’re going to talk about today:
A team of researchers all so very recently found that ginseng also reduces muscular fatigue and, importantly, hastens recovery of muscle damage caused by exercise.
And that’s not all…
❝It should also be noted that, by reducing fatigue, taking ginseng on a regular basis may also help reduce the risk of injury, particularly in the case of muscles or ligaments, which can in turn improve athletic performance.❞
This means that it can be taken regularly and prophylactically, as they found:
❝taking ginseng systematically for a long time can mitigate the response of the biological markers, mainly creatine kinase (CK) and interleukin 6 (IL-6), responsible for exercise-induced muscle damage and inflammation.❞
You may be thinking “isn’t creatine good?” and yes, yes it is:
Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People
…however, creatine kinase is not creatine. Creatine kinase (CK) is an enzyme that affects the creatine (to put it in few words, without getting into the fascinating biochemistry of this). Now, it’s necessary for us to have some CK (or else we wouldn’t be able to do what we need to with the creatine), but elevated levels often indicate some sort of problem going on:
Approach to asymptomatic creatine kinase elevation
…so ginseng keeping those things balanced is a good thing.
The study
We’ve talked a lot about the findings and what they mean, but if you’d like to read the paper for yourself, you can read it here:
Effect of Ginseng Intake on Muscle Damage Induced by Exercise in Healthy Adults
Where to get ginseng
If you’d like to take ginseng as a supplement, then there are many ways to do so, with the most common being capsules or ginseng tea, which has an interesting and distinctive taste, and is very refreshing. Here are examples on Amazon, for your convenience:
Enjoy!
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What’s Your Ikigai?
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Ikigai: A Closer Look
We’ve mentioned ikigai from time to time, usually when discussing the characteristics associated with Blue Zone centenarians, for example as number 5 of…
It’s about finding one’s “purpose”. Not merely a function, but what actually drives you in life. And, if Japanese studies can be extrapolated to the rest of the world, it has a significant and large impact on mortality (other factors being controlled for); not having a sense of ikigai is associated with an approximately 47%* increase in 7-year mortality risk in the categories of cardiovascular disease and external cause mortality:
Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study
*we did a lot of averaging and fuzzy math to get this figure; the link will show you the full stats though!
In case that huge (n=43,391) study didn’t convince you, here’s another comparably-sized (n=43,117) one that found similarly, albeit framing the numbers the other way around, i.e. a comparable decrease in mortality risk for having a sense of ikigai:
This study was even longer (12 years rather than 7), so the fact that it found pretty much the same results the 7-year study we cited just before is quite compelling evidence. Again, multivariate hazard ratios were adjusted for age, BMI, drinking and smoking status, physical activity, sleep duration, education, occupation, marital status, perceived mental stress, and medical history—so all these things were effectively controlled for statistically.
Three kinds of ikigai
There are three principal kinds of ikigai:
- Social ikigai: for example, a caring role in the family or community, volunteer work, teaching
- Asocial ikigai: for example, a solitary practice of self-discipline, spirituality, or study without any particular intent to teach others
- Antisocial ikigai: for example, a strong desire to outlive an enemy, or to harm a person or group that one hates
You may be thinking: wait, aren’t those last things bad?
And… Maybe! But ikigai is not a matter of morality or even about “warm fuzzy feelings”. The fact is, having a sense of purpose increases longevity regardless of moral implications or niceness.
Nevertheless, for obvious reasons there is a lot more focus on the first two categories (social and asocial), and of those, especially the first category (social), because on a social level, “we all do well when we all do well”.
We exemplified them above, but they can be defined:
- Social: working for the betterment of society
- Asocial: working for the betterment of oneself
Of course, for many people, the same ikigai may cover both of those—often somebody who excels at something for its own sake and/but shares it with others to enrich their lives also, for example a teacher, an artist, a scientist, etc.
For it to cover both, however, requires that both parts of it are genuinely part of their feeling of ikigai, and not merely unintended consequences.
For example, a piano teacher who loves music in general and the piano in particular, and would gladly spend every waking moment studying/practising/performing, but hates having to teach it, but needs to pay the bills so teaches it anyway, cannot be said to be living any kind of social ikigai there, just asocial. And in fact, if teaching the piano is causing them to not have the time or energy to pursue it for its own sake, they might not even be living any ikigai at all.
One other thing to watch out for
There is one last stumbling block, which is that while we can find ikigai, we can also lose it! Examples of this may include:
- A professional whose job is their ikigai, until they face mandatory retirement or are otherwise unable to continue their work (perhaps due to disability, for example)
- A parent whose full-time-parent role is their ikigai, until their children leave for school, university, life in general
- A married person whose “devoted spouse” role is their ikigai, until their partner dies
For this reason, people of any age can have a “crisis of identity” that’s actually more of a “crisis of purpose”.
There are two ways of handling this:
- Have a back-up ikigai ready! For example, if your profession is your ikigai, maybe you have a hobby waiting in the wings, that you can smoothly jump ship to upon retirement.
- Embrace the fluidity of life! Sometimes, things don’t happen the way we expect. Sometimes life’s surprises can trip us up; sometimes they can leave us a sobbing wreck. But so long as life continues, there is an opportunity to pick ourselves up and decide where to go from that point. Note that this is not fatalism, by the way, it doesn’t have to be “this bad thing happened so that we could find this good thing, so really it was a good thing all along”. Rather, it can equally readily be “well, we absolutely did not want that bad thing to happen, but since it did, now we shall take it this way from here”.
For more on developing/maintaining psychological resilience in the face of life’s less welcome adversities, see:
Psychological Resilience Training
…and:
Putting The Abs Into Absurdity ← do not underestimate the power of this one
Take care!
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