By Ned Kelly

Health authorities have identified one of their top concerns as they wage war on diabetes: white rice. Yup, 1.4 billion people's lives just got ruined.

A meta analysis of four major studies by the Harvard School of Public Health, involving more than 350,000 people followed for four to 20 years, and published in the British Medical Journal, threw up findings nobody in Asia wanted to hear, reports the Straits Times.

For while obesity and sugary drinks are the major causes of diabetes in the West, Asians are more predisposed to diabetes than Caucasians, so people do not have to be obese to be at risk. Starchy white rice can overload their bodies with blood sugar and heighten their risk of diabetes.

The report concluded that one plate of white rice eaten a day raises the risk of diabetes by 11 percent. It also said that the Chinese averaged four servings of white rice a day.

It is not all doom and gloom in the cereal grain stakes though. Long grain white rice is better than short grain when it comes to how it spikes blood sugar. While adding 20 percent of brown rice to a white rice diet is enough to reduce the risk of diabetes by 16 percent, apparently.

Still, what a load of mafan over the ol' mifan.

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