Giving Rice a fair shake

A friend approached me recently and asked me if rice is fattening. He told me he had been advised by his physician to lose some weight, and the first thing that popped into his mind was to cut down his rice intake.

I told him that he’d have to ask an expert -- a nutritionist or a fitness specialist-as the only information I’ve gleaned on the subject of weight loss had come from a few articles and a couple of ebooks downloaded from the Internet. What amused me most was the fact that my friend immediately pinpointed rice as the number one culprit for his weight gain.

For us Filipinos, rice is a staple in every meal. In fact, some of us eat way too much rice-I even know of someone who eats three cups of rice per meal. I think that is where the problem lies.

In the 1970s when the Atkins diet first burst into the scene, rice and other carbohydrate-rich foods were unfairly criticized. The diet, which was developed by the late Dr. Robert Atkins, aims to cut down the carbohydrate intake of a person to as low as 20 grams a day in the induction phase. In the late 90s, the Atkins diet, along with other low carb and high protein diets have once again become popular. The resurgence of these fad diets actually led to large declines in the sales of carb-heavy foods like pasta and rice.

High protein and low carb diets have been greatly criticized for a number of decades now. Experts suggest that any diet that restricts or cuts down a particular food group may not be that healthy. With their emphasis on high protein and fatty foods, you don’t have to be a cardiologist to know that high protein/high fat and low carbohydrate diets will eventually take a toll on your heart and lead to cardiovascular diseases.

Common sense will tell us that rice per se is not fattening, it is the over consumption of it. Same goes for the over consumption of any other food. If you consume more calories than what you can burn through physical activity, then your body will store it as fat. It’s as simple as that.

It must be noted, however, that some types of rice are better than others. For instance, white rice or polished rice tends to be more inferior to unpolished types of rice such as brown rice or red rice. White rice is comprised mostly of pure carbohydrates, with all of the nutrients stripped off during the milling process. Brown rice on the other hand, with its outer bran layer intact, still contains essential nutrients such as fiber, essential oils, and vitamin B.

In the end, portion size is the key, and not totally cutting rice from your diet. A reasonable serving of rice may not necessarily lead to excess poundage. The same can be said for any kind of food, so I would not openly advise my friend to give up rice totally. Besides, haven’t you ever wondered why in Asian countries such as Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines, the average person's diet consists of mainly carbohydrates such as rice and noodles, yet these groups have very low rates of obesity? The average Asian person is also thinner and slimmer than the average Westerner. This example seems to contradict Robert Atkins’s claim that low-carbohydrate diets help to lose weight. What could be the problem with the average Westerner’s diet, you may ask? Three words:

Super sized portions.