They advise eating more rice to fight obesity in the West

"Healthy" kiosks in schools, higher taxes on sugary drinks, warnings on "junk food" packaging, new drugs to reduce appetite … This week, meeting at Scotland the older ones World experts in obesity evaluated These and many others as alternatives to stop the sharp rise of this disease, especially in the Western world. The most striking recipe, however, came from the East. This was brought by a Japanese researcher and it seemed simple enough: to improve, he said, you must eat more rice. And he justified it by a battery of statistics that forced him to take it seriously, according to the newspaper Clarín.

Professor Tomoko Imai, of the Department of Nutrition of Doshisha Women's College of Kyoto, as well as colleagues from Nagoya University and two other local research centers, put on the shoulder a work consisting of an exhaustive comparison of obese population rates and quantities of rice consumed per capita in 136 countries in the world with more than one million inhabitants.

After this observation, a very clear diagram was revealed: almost without exception,Countries where the population consumes more rice have a considerably lower proportion of overweight people compared to nations where this cereal is less consumed or has almost no presence at the table. "A significant relationship has been found. Rice consumption has been inversely proportional to obesity ", That was the conclusion.

Of course, high or low rice consumption is not the only thing that defines people who reach an unhealthy weight. Consequently, these researchers have also taken into account in the statistical calculation the influence of a number of factors related to the lifestyle and socio-economic situation of each country, including the total energy consumption in the country. diet, level of education, number of smokers, product per capita, health expenditure and percentage of the population over 65 years old. And even with this adjustment, they explained, the relationship remained unchanged: the higher the rice intake, the less obese.

"The relationships observed suggest that the rate of obesity is low in countries where rice is the staple food. Therefore, a Japanese or Asian diet style, made from rice, can help prevent obesity, "said Imai, to the surprise of those attending the 26th European Obesity Congress, which just ended in Glasgow's icy spring city.

"Given the growing levels of obesity in the world, eat more rice should be recommended to protect the population against obesity, even in Western countries ", said the Japanese academic who led the research, based on data from the United Nations, the World Bank and other specialized sources.

This compares with countries with much lower rice consumption, such as France (15 g), the United Kingdom (19 g), the United States (19 g), Spain (22 g), Canada (24 g) or Australia (32 g). Argentina, with an average of 22.5 grams per day per capita, ranks 78th in the rankings.

This means that our country is a little below the center of the table, exceeding countries in the region such as Chile (22 g), Mexico and Paraguay (13 g), but with a much lower consumption than Uruguay (31 g). ), Bolivia (72 g), Colombia (73 g) and especially Brazil (92 g), Ecuador (122 g), Peru (128 g) and Cuba (153 g).

"Eating rice," says Imai, "seems to protect us from weight gain. fiber, nutrients and other components present in grains they can increase the feeling of fullness and avoid overeating. Rice is also low in fat and produces a relatively low blood sugar after eating, which suppresses the secretion of insulin, although it is also proven that people who consume too much rice are at risk. more to develop a metabolic syndrome and diabetes. . In this way, the consumption of an appropriate amount of rice can prevent obesity. "

"This study consisted in isolating one of the ingredients – rice – which integrates a much broader food model, Asian or sometimes Japanese, for which we already had much evidence, produced mainly at the local level, about its badociation with health and even with greater longevity, "said Monica Katz, president of the Argentine Society of Nutrition, in dialogue with Clarín.

"The important thing in these cases," Katz emphasized, "is to avoid believing that the possible effects on health or disease could be produced by a single food of this type, and not we, the Argentines, should eat more rice alone.The reading would be that, if we followed the pattern of the Japanese diet, we would surely now have quite different rates of obesity. "