"Is White Rice a Yellow Light or a Red Light Food?"
Arsenic is not just considered a carcinogen,
but a so-called non- threshold carcinogen,
meaning that there really isn't a "safe" level of exposure.
Any dose, no matter how small, may carry some cancer risk.
So it may be reasonable to use the conservative ALARA approach,
reducing exposure as low as reasonably achievable.
I have a low bar for recommending people avoid foods
that aren't particularly health- promoting in the first place,
like when that acrylamide story broke—
the chemical found concentrated in French fries and potato chips.
I was like, look, we're not sure how bad this acrylamide stuff is,
but we're talking about French fries and potato chips,
which are not healthy anyway.
So I had no problem provisionally bumping them
from my list of yellow-light foods into my red-light list,
from "minimize consumption" to "ideally avoid on a day-to-day basis."
One could apply the same logic here.
Junk food made out of brown rice syrup, rice milk, and white rice
are not just processed foods
but arsenic-contaminated processed foods, so may belong down here.
But something like whole brown rice is more difficult
because there are pros to help outweigh the cons.
The rice industry argues that the many health benefits
of rice consumption outweigh any potential risk.
That's the same thing you hear coming out of Japan
about the arsenic-contaminated seaweed hijiki.
Yeah, the cancer risk posed by hijiki consumption
exceeds acceptable cancer risk levels by like an order of magnitude,
but the Japanese Ministry of Health stresses the potential health benefits:
lots of fiber and minerals, as if hijiki was the only weed in the sea.
Why not choose any of the other seaweeds
and get all the benefits without the arsenic?
And the same thing here.
The many health benefits of rice consumption outweigh
any potential risk, as if brown rice was the only whole grain on the planet.
Can't you get the whole grain benefits without the risks
by eating oatmeal instead, or barley, or quinoa?
Or is there some unique benefit to rice,
such that we really should try to keep brown rice in our diet?
Consumer Reports recommended moving rice to like here;
not necessarily avoid it completely, but moderate one's intake.
The rice industry criticized Consumer Reports for warning people
about the arsenic levels in rice, saying there's a body of scientific evidence
that establishes the nutritional benefits of rice consumption,
and so any assessment of the arsenic levels in rice that fails
to take this information into account is inherently flawed and very misleading.
They cite two pieces of evidence.
Rice-consuming cultures tend to be healthier,
but is that because or despite their white rice consumption?
What about how rice-eating Americans tend to be healthier?
Yeah, but rice eaters also tend to eat significantly less saturated fat,
so again, how do we know it's because or despite the white rice?
They could have cited this study showing brown rice intake
of 2 or more servings a week was associated with a lower risk of diabetes.
But presumably the reason they didn't is because white rice intake
is associated with an increased risk of diabetes,
and white rice represents 95% of the U.S. rice industry.
Switching out a third of a serving of white rice a day for brown rice
might lower diabetes risk 16%, but switching out that same white rice
for whole grains in general, like oats or barley, might work even better!
So other grains have like 10 times less arsenic
and are associated with even lower disease risk.
No wonder the rice industry didn't cite this study.
They do cite the Adventist studies, though, and some in vitro data.
For example, in a Petri dish there are rice phytonutrients that can inhibit
the growth of colon cancer cells, at greater and greater doses,
while apparently leaving normal colon cells alone. That's exciting.
And indeed, those who happened to eat those phytonutrients
in the form of brown rice once a week or more, between colonoscopies,
had a 40% lower risk of developing polyps.
The consumption of green leafy vegetables, dried fruit, and beans
were also associated with lower polyp incidence.
But the only reason we care about the development of polyps
is that polyps can turn into cancer.
But there had never been any studies on brown rice consumption and cancer
until now, which we'll cover next.