10 ms·

Rice fuels diabetes and climate crises

27 points by leethargo 4y ago

quikoa 4y ago
https://archive.is/OzeIu https://archive.is/OzeIu
gpmcadam 4y ago
let me guess, “eat insects”?
- leethargo 4y ago
  I think potatoes is what the Chinese government was already promoting for some years.
  - scythe 4y ago
    China does promote potatoes. But the key advantage of the potato is that it grows where rice will not, in the drier and colder west of China. So it allows China to expand its food growing capacity. Unfortunately, while I had plenty of good experiences with food available in China, it was my experience (2018) that the restaurants just didn't know what to do with potatoes; they were usually served like a turnip or carrot or something, and not treated as a starch. It probably doesn't help that most of the potato dishes that Westerners adore involve dairy products or olive oil in some way, when these are not so accessible in China.
  - the_af 4y ago
    Are potatoes healthy, anyway? I adore them, but they cause trouble (gas, fermentation) and they seem to be excluded from many kinds of health diets. (The again, most nutritionists seem cargo cultists to me)
- konfusinomicon 4y ago
  I've always been told to not eat the rice if it has eyes but perhaps those who told me were climate change deniers
gaudat 4y ago
The Japanese wants to have a word with you. Yes they have a high mortality rate in stomach cancer due to all the preserved and salty food but rice is probably not very harmful in the grand picture. Meanwhile North America with its family size portion of everything...
- civilized 4y ago
  No developed Asian country needs a lecture on health and longevity best practices from any Anglosphere country.
  - justinzollars 4y ago
    100%. The Western media loves to lecture other people. The lectures are becoming more irrelevant with the rise of the East.
  - tomp 4y ago
    Are you sure about that? This 2019 article claims that Asian Americans (in several states) live longer than the Japanese (in Japan). https://180degreehealth.com/blue-zones-bullshit/ https://180degreehealth.com/blue-zones-bullshit/ (though I haven't checked the statistics myself)
    - gaudat 4y ago
      That can be the people with Asian roots bringing their eating traditions with them immigrating in the US. Like mostly cooking by themselves instead of eating out. Or frequency of snacking. Or having a different palate/diet than Anglos and other ethnicities.
    - inpdx 4y ago
      He has interesting ideas but then presents his alternate views, without a rigorous scientific approach, as settled. Worth investigating though.
    - civilized 4y ago
      1. I bet Japanese in several prefectures of Japan outlive the general population of Japanese as well. 2. Populations with a lot of immigrants tend to have strange health and longevity statistics. See for example the Hispanic Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox
lm28469 4y ago
Can't read the article because it's pay walled but I very much doubt rice is anywhere close to the top 10 food that cause diabetes The only thing I could find is this article that cites a study that's says eating 450gr+ of rice per day regularly can increase your risk of diabetes, which seems like a crazy diet for most of the world
- pid-1 4y ago
  Like, IF one is already glucose intolerant then they should be mindful about white rice, as it has a moderate glycemic index. Don't eat very large portions, don't eat all the time, mix with high fiber vegetables, etc... and you will be fine. But then, I agree saying rice is fueling diabetes is a complete joke.
- tzs 4y ago
  > The only thing I could find is this article that cites a study that's says eating 450gr+ of rice per day regularly can increase your risk of diabetes, which seems like a crazy diet for most of the world. Is that cooked or uncooked? The rice I buy is 150 calories for 42g uncooked, so 450g uncooked would be 1600 calories. That does sound high for most places. But that same rice cooked is 200 calories for 150g, so 450g cooked would be 600 calories. That seems quite reasonable.
commitpizza 4y ago
Locked article, doesn't explain why in the ingress. I think that there is a lot of issues with modern agriculture, but that people is eating rice is most likely not one of them. Just travel to Japan, they are more fit and it's rare to see overweight people. In my country of birth Sweden, about 50% of the adult population is overweight and an alarming amount of them is obese. I don't think eating rice is the problem tbh. It's really alarming how bad journalism has become. Extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence.
- leethargo 4y ago
  One issue is methane emissions from the rice paddies, which is a rice-specific phenomenon which you wouldn't have growing wheat, millet etc.
  - IKLOL 4y ago
    I think we should stop focusing on how much waste FOOD that humans live on produces and focus more on renewable energy. I can see good intentions turning into famine very quickly.
  - unixgoddess 4y ago
    another rice-specific issue is the huge amount of arsenic. curiously, there's more arsenic in highly processed rice products (rice crackers), I have no idea why.
    - yareally 4y ago
      Pesticide runoff? Arsenic is commonly used a pesticide. Best of all, it's considered organic, so farmers are encouraged to use it.
      - chomp 4y ago
        Both naturally from rocks and soil, and latent arsenic from decades of arsenic pesticide use. Arsenic pesticides have been banned for a while, but they’re still in the soil. Rice, for whatever reason, can take up this element more readily than other crops. There has been some research on this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29749629/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29749629/
mattw2121 4y ago
At the rate we're going, is it OK for me to eat anything now?
- ihatepython 4y ago
  Yes, you can eat ze bugs
mulvya 4y ago
This one paragraph is the sum total given for the diabetes angle: "Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice."
- _cenw 4y ago
  Could replace that almost 1:1 with wheat and it wouldn't be more or less correct.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Can it be traced though? I see no source on that. Please for the love of people make claims with actual evidence. People in Asia used to eat more rice especially as a proportion of diet in the past...
costanzaDynasty 4y ago
Global rice shortage imminent, anti-rice article on cue. Rice the new smoking.
- mrleinad 4y ago
  Exactly. Though if you go a bit deeper, it's more about a fertilizer shortage that will impact many other crops as well.
  - cassepipe 4y ago
    Which is probably itself a consequence of the fact energy is getting more expensive at a global scale since you need a decent amount to make fertilizers. You have to dig deeper/further for increasingly lower returns nowadays. Let's hope that enough of that energy is actually spent on energy transitioning or we're going to have big problems. (Ha, my bad, we're actually having big problems, right now)
    - mrleinad 4y ago
      Kinda, but it's also because China closed the fertilizer exports, and Russia invaded Ukraine and the west is actively boycotting russian fertilizer exports.
juujian 4y ago
> "Consequently, rice production is responsible for 12% of total methane emissions—and 1.5% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, comparable to the aviation sector. Vietnam’s paddy fields produce much more carbon equivalent than the country’s transportation." I think there is a difference between flying around a few million people who are part of the 1% and feeding 60% of the world's population. I think looking at sources of emissions is fine, especially when there is potential for reduction. But this feels a bit like blaming the global poor for climate change. Rice does not fuel the climate crisis, coal power plants do.
- greatpatton 4y ago
  I agree with your conclusion but come on, before the pandemic there were 4.5 billions air passenger per years, so airlines are globally flying way more than the 1%.
  - juujian 4y ago
    "4.5 billion" -- that's not individual passengers, that counts the guy commuting between New York and Los Angeles twice a week 100 times, and Elon Musk probably 250 times, idk. (Realistically does not count private jets probably.)
- sethammons 4y ago
  Half the population of industrial nations may fly in a given year, and it works out to about 11% of the world population flying. However the "1%" may account for up to half of aviation's emissions, mostly on private jets. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/one-percent-worlds-population-accounts-more-half-flying-emissions https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/one-percent-worlds-...
  - juujian 4y ago
    Those do sound like plausible numbers. Appreciate the data!
- chaorace 4y ago
mirko22 4y ago
In theory if you’d eat carbs all day long since you wake up till you fall asleep and keep the high level of glucose non stop you could develop insulin resistance in the cells which would lead to diabetes type 2 So this title is kinda of a joke…
tw1984 4y ago
Rice is probably the worst junk food in the world, with a GI of 90 and billion of people eating it, its negative impact on health on a global scale is just shockingly bad. I stopped eating that junk food a few years ago, couldn't feel better when I have other low GI high fiber carbs on every meal. Saw some comments on the east vs west nonsense, this thread is about rice, although it is mainly eaten in the east, it is damage is on a global scale. We are talking about a food that has a GI of 90, one of highest in the world. It doesn't matter whether your skin color is white, yellow, blue or pink, keep eating junk food that has GI of 90 is going to cause you diabetes.
- cassepipe 4y ago
  Wow, I was really surprised by rice's GI, thanks, I erroneously thought it was lower than white pasta.
- andrejguran 4y ago
  can you provide some source? Harvard says it's 73 ± 4 For comparison Potato: 78 ± 4, White bread: 75 ± 2 https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
jna_sh 4y ago
Paywall, so it's possible the article addresses this, but from my understanding, it is rice cultivated in deep water paddies that contributes to excess methane emissions, as it creates the conditions for methane-producing anaerobic bacteria. Cultivating rice in shallow water that results in less methane emission is not only possible, but possibly optimal.
davidgl 4y ago
https://archive.is/OzeIu https://archive.is/OzeIu
Atreiden 4y ago
Sensationalist garbage. The vast majority of the article is about stagnating yields and global over-reliance on rice, with two small, uncited, unsupported blurbs in support of the title: > No mere victim of global warming, rice cultivation is also a major cause of it, because paddy fields emit a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. No data to support, no link to relevant studies, not even a real measurement of emitted methane. EDIT: Okay, there is one additional blurb on the subject, completely detached from the above. Not a lot of cohesion in this piece. > Consequently, rice production is responsible for 12% of total methane emissions—and 1.5% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, comparable to the aviation sector. Vietnam’s paddy fields produce much more carbon equivalent than the country’s transportation. This seems bad faith to me. Like they needed a data point to support their title and found the most fantastical-sounding one they could think of. But yeah, feeding the majority of the global population is going to leave a footprint. This only makes sense to evaluate in comparison to alternatives, and I think you'd be absolutely hard-pressed to come up with an alternative with fewer ecological consequences. > Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice. Absolutely no support for the latter statement. The title here is pure clickbait and does not belong here.
- the_af 4y ago
  Yeah, I noticed the lack for support for any of the assertions. I don't know if they are right or wrong, I'm just saying the article merely forcefully makes assertions without backing them up.
- leethargo 4y ago
  It's unfortunate that sources are not specified, but the methane emissions from rice paddies are well known, I believe. I didn't find absolute numbers, but OWID does list them as significant (though less than from animal): https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-ch4-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-ch4-em... I did not hear about the rice-diabetes connection before, but "golden rice" was developed specifically to deal with the nutritional deficiencies caused by rice (over)consumption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
unixgoddess 4y ago
can't read the article, but does rice include brown rice? that would be surprising
- leethargo 4y ago
  Brown rice might not cause diabetes (if other rice does at all), but the methane from production will be the same.
BigCryo 4y ago
Rice won't cause you to have diabetes unless you're fat generally speaking or unless you already have diabetes type 1.. the most common type of diabetes is really diabetes 2.. you get diabetes 2 when you are obese and at the same time you eat high glycemic index foods.. As far as what kind of foods will cause you to become obese, rice is probably not on the top of the list because it's a low energy density food... Problem is once you become obese and and you thereby get insulin resistance, if you eat rice then your blood sugar will go up and that's called diabetes.. So the problem is eating rice if you're fat, but if you're skinny eating rice is not going to make you fat not generally unless you eat a lot because rice is a low energy density food relatively speaking
- mr_woozy 4y ago
  [dead]
- frumper 4y ago
  I know more than a few people with type 2 diabetes, none were obese. Sometimes it just happens
  - BigCryo 4y ago
    But typically only when they were elderly
briandear 4y ago
Is there actually a climate crisis? Because I’ve been told that “the end is near” for over 20 years now, and it’s like the “disaster” is just around the corner. It feels like the “crisis” is manufactured by people making money and gaining power because the end is perpetually nigh. How long is this crisis supposed to last? It seems like it’s nothing more than a totalitarian cudgel used to achieve the economic restructuring dreams of post-Soviet Marxists. Now an article claiming rice is “bad?” A staple food for most of the world’s population. If they can convince most of the world to abandon rice, that is the foot in the door for convincing anyone anything. We should stop actual pollution and stop with the carbon dioxide hysteria. Stopping CO2 isn’t cleaning waterways or building toilets, or eliminating toxic chemicals in the food chain. But there’s not power to be gained by fighting plebeian pollution like there is with a literal re-ordering of the energy industry and economy.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  No, there is no climate "crisis". What there is is a changing climate which may - or may not, the models which are used to gauge what is going to happen are notoriously inaccurate - cause problems in certain regions of the world due to increasing drought or - in other regions - increased precipitation. Depending on where the climate will go in the coming centuries - and that is the time frame you have to think about, not the '10 years to extinction' which is often bandied around by climate alarmists - there is a possibility of sea level rise causing problems in lower-lying regions like Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Most of the problems which are likely to occur can be solved using technological means ranging from building or raising dikes (like the Netherlands has been doing for centuries), moving to more water-efficient methods of agriculture, building desalination plants to increase the amount of water available for agriculture, building storage reservoirs to collect runoff in the cold months for use in the warm months and more. The climate "crisis" is a political stick which is being used by various groups for their own means, some of them ideological - e.g. the economic restructuring you mentioned, viz. "green new deal" - and some of them more basic ploys to gain power. Yet others are simply attempts at using the climate scare to make money. Yes, it would be far better to concentrate on reducing actual pollution instead of chasing the CO₂ boogeyman but the movers and shakers behind the climate scare seem to have decided there is more power to be gained from whipping up the populace with tales of flooded cities and parched fields than can be achieved with the prospect of dead oceans and silent springs - probably because that has been tried before and did not manage to scare the populace into compliance with their policy schemes. While exaggerated - just like the climate scare - there is more truth to the claims of pollution being a threat to future generations than CO₂ being so. The planet has become "greener" due to the increased CO₂ level, forest cover has increased [1], agricultural yield has increased while evapotranspiration has decreased leading to higher water efficiency [2]. But... who cares when whipping up the populace gives you clicks, votes, money and power. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover-increase-world-deforestation-farming-rainforests-forests-a8486096.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0378377483900756 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037837...
the_af 4y ago
Most of the article is about how growing rice contributes negatively to climate change, and also how it's not scaling up with demand and the yields are getting lower while demand increases. However, they also make this claim: > Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice. Is this true? Is South Asia's prevalence of diabetes notorious enough, and can it be traced to rice consumption? The article provides no references.
jacknews 4y ago
Where is the lab-grown rice? It seems possible in principle to use cell/tissue culture to grow only the rice (or wheat or other grass seeds) grains, rather than the whole plant. In that case just a few mega factories could feed the world.

27 points by leethargo 4y ago

quikoa 4y ago

https://archive.is/OzeIu https://archive.is/OzeIu

gpmcadam 4y ago

let me guess, “eat insects”?

leethargo 4y ago
I think potatoes is what the Chinese government was already promoting for some years.
- scythe 4y ago
  China does promote potatoes. But the key advantage of the potato is that it grows where rice will not, in the drier and colder west of China. So it allows China to expand its food growing capacity. Unfortunately, while I had plenty of good experiences with food available in China, it was my experience (2018) that the restaurants just didn't know what to do with potatoes; they were usually served like a turnip or carrot or something, and not treated as a starch. It probably doesn't help that most of the potato dishes that Westerners adore involve dairy products or olive oil in some way, when these are not so accessible in China.
- the_af 4y ago
  Are potatoes healthy, anyway? I adore them, but they cause trouble (gas, fermentation) and they seem to be excluded from many kinds of health diets. (The again, most nutritionists seem cargo cultists to me)
konfusinomicon 4y ago
I've always been told to not eat the rice if it has eyes but perhaps those who told me were climate change deniers

gaudat 4y ago

The Japanese wants to have a word with you. Yes they have a high mortality rate in stomach cancer due to all the preserved and salty food but rice is probably not very harmful in the grand picture. Meanwhile North America with its family size portion of everything...

civilized 4y ago
No developed Asian country needs a lecture on health and longevity best practices from any Anglosphere country.
- justinzollars 4y ago
  100%. The Western media loves to lecture other people. The lectures are becoming more irrelevant with the rise of the East.
- tomp 4y ago
  Are you sure about that? This 2019 article claims that Asian Americans (in several states) live longer than the Japanese (in Japan). https://180degreehealth.com/blue-zones-bullshit/ https://180degreehealth.com/blue-zones-bullshit/ (though I haven't checked the statistics myself)
  - gaudat 4y ago
    That can be the people with Asian roots bringing their eating traditions with them immigrating in the US. Like mostly cooking by themselves instead of eating out. Or frequency of snacking. Or having a different palate/diet than Anglos and other ethnicities.
  - inpdx 4y ago
    He has interesting ideas but then presents his alternate views, without a rigorous scientific approach, as settled. Worth investigating though.
  - civilized 4y ago
    1. I bet Japanese in several prefectures of Japan outlive the general population of Japanese as well. 2. Populations with a lot of immigrants tend to have strange health and longevity statistics. See for example the Hispanic Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox

lm28469 4y ago

Can't read the article because it's pay walled but I very much doubt rice is anywhere close to the top 10 food that cause diabetes The only thing I could find is this article that cites a study that's says eating 450gr+ of rice per day regularly can increase your risk of diabetes, which seems like a crazy diet for most of the world

pid-1 4y ago
Like, IF one is already glucose intolerant then they should be mindful about white rice, as it has a moderate glycemic index. Don't eat very large portions, don't eat all the time, mix with high fiber vegetables, etc... and you will be fine. But then, I agree saying rice is fueling diabetes is a complete joke.
tzs 4y ago
> The only thing I could find is this article that cites a study that's says eating 450gr+ of rice per day regularly can increase your risk of diabetes, which seems like a crazy diet for most of the world. Is that cooked or uncooked? The rice I buy is 150 calories for 42g uncooked, so 450g uncooked would be 1600 calories. That does sound high for most places. But that same rice cooked is 200 calories for 150g, so 450g cooked would be 600 calories. That seems quite reasonable.

commitpizza 4y ago

Locked article, doesn't explain why in the ingress. I think that there is a lot of issues with modern agriculture, but that people is eating rice is most likely not one of them. Just travel to Japan, they are more fit and it's rare to see overweight people. In my country of birth Sweden, about 50% of the adult population is overweight and an alarming amount of them is obese. I don't think eating rice is the problem tbh. It's really alarming how bad journalism has become. Extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence.

leethargo 4y ago
One issue is methane emissions from the rice paddies, which is a rice-specific phenomenon which you wouldn't have growing wheat, millet etc.
- IKLOL 4y ago
  I think we should stop focusing on how much waste FOOD that humans live on produces and focus more on renewable energy. I can see good intentions turning into famine very quickly.
- unixgoddess 4y ago
  another rice-specific issue is the huge amount of arsenic. curiously, there's more arsenic in highly processed rice products (rice crackers), I have no idea why.
  - yareally 4y ago
    Pesticide runoff? Arsenic is commonly used a pesticide. Best of all, it's considered organic, so farmers are encouraged to use it.
    - chomp 4y ago
      Both naturally from rocks and soil, and latent arsenic from decades of arsenic pesticide use. Arsenic pesticides have been banned for a while, but they’re still in the soil. Rice, for whatever reason, can take up this element more readily than other crops. There has been some research on this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29749629/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29749629/

mattw2121 4y ago

At the rate we're going, is it OK for me to eat anything now?

ihatepython 4y ago
Yes, you can eat ze bugs

mulvya 4y ago

This one paragraph is the sum total given for the diabetes angle: "Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice."

_cenw 4y ago
Could replace that almost 1:1 with wheat and it wouldn't be more or less correct.
AstralStorm 4y ago
Can it be traced though? I see no source on that. Please for the love of people make claims with actual evidence. People in Asia used to eat more rice especially as a proportion of diet in the past...

costanzaDynasty 4y ago

Global rice shortage imminent, anti-rice article on cue. Rice the new smoking.

mrleinad 4y ago
Exactly. Though if you go a bit deeper, it's more about a fertilizer shortage that will impact many other crops as well.
- cassepipe 4y ago
  Which is probably itself a consequence of the fact energy is getting more expensive at a global scale since you need a decent amount to make fertilizers. You have to dig deeper/further for increasingly lower returns nowadays. Let's hope that enough of that energy is actually spent on energy transitioning or we're going to have big problems. (Ha, my bad, we're actually having big problems, right now)
  - mrleinad 4y ago
    Kinda, but it's also because China closed the fertilizer exports, and Russia invaded Ukraine and the west is actively boycotting russian fertilizer exports.

juujian 4y ago

> "Consequently, rice production is responsible for 12% of total methane emissions—and 1.5% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, comparable to the aviation sector. Vietnam’s paddy fields produce much more carbon equivalent than the country’s transportation." I think there is a difference between flying around a few million people who are part of the 1% and feeding 60% of the world's population. I think looking at sources of emissions is fine, especially when there is potential for reduction. But this feels a bit like blaming the global poor for climate change. Rice does not fuel the climate crisis, coal power plants do.

greatpatton 4y ago
I agree with your conclusion but come on, before the pandemic there were 4.5 billions air passenger per years, so airlines are globally flying way more than the 1%.
- juujian 4y ago
  "4.5 billion" -- that's not individual passengers, that counts the guy commuting between New York and Los Angeles twice a week 100 times, and Elon Musk probably 250 times, idk. (Realistically does not count private jets probably.)
sethammons 4y ago
Half the population of industrial nations may fly in a given year, and it works out to about 11% of the world population flying. However the "1%" may account for up to half of aviation's emissions, mostly on private jets. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/one-percent-worlds-population-accounts-more-half-flying-emissions https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/one-percent-worlds-...
- juujian 4y ago
  Those do sound like plausible numbers. Appreciate the data!
chaorace 4y ago

mirko22 4y ago

In theory if you’d eat carbs all day long since you wake up till you fall asleep and keep the high level of glucose non stop you could develop insulin resistance in the cells which would lead to diabetes type 2 So this title is kinda of a joke…

tw1984 4y ago

Rice is probably the worst junk food in the world, with a GI of 90 and billion of people eating it, its negative impact on health on a global scale is just shockingly bad. I stopped eating that junk food a few years ago, couldn't feel better when I have other low GI high fiber carbs on every meal. Saw some comments on the east vs west nonsense, this thread is about rice, although it is mainly eaten in the east, it is damage is on a global scale. We are talking about a food that has a GI of 90, one of highest in the world. It doesn't matter whether your skin color is white, yellow, blue or pink, keep eating junk food that has GI of 90 is going to cause you diabetes.

cassepipe 4y ago
Wow, I was really surprised by rice's GI, thanks, I erroneously thought it was lower than white pasta.
andrejguran 4y ago
can you provide some source? Harvard says it's 73 ± 4 For comparison Potato: 78 ± 4, White bread: 75 ± 2 https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...

jna_sh 4y ago

Paywall, so it's possible the article addresses this, but from my understanding, it is rice cultivated in deep water paddies that contributes to excess methane emissions, as it creates the conditions for methane-producing anaerobic bacteria. Cultivating rice in shallow water that results in less methane emission is not only possible, but possibly optimal.

davidgl 4y ago

https://archive.is/OzeIu https://archive.is/OzeIu

Atreiden 4y ago

Sensationalist garbage. The vast majority of the article is about stagnating yields and global over-reliance on rice, with two small, uncited, unsupported blurbs in support of the title: > No mere victim of global warming, rice cultivation is also a major cause of it, because paddy fields emit a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. No data to support, no link to relevant studies, not even a real measurement of emitted methane. EDIT: Okay, there is one additional blurb on the subject, completely detached from the above. Not a lot of cohesion in this piece. > Consequently, rice production is responsible for 12% of total methane emissions—and 1.5% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, comparable to the aviation sector. Vietnam’s paddy fields produce much more carbon equivalent than the country’s transportation. This seems bad faith to me. Like they needed a data point to support their title and found the most fantastical-sounding one they could think of. But yeah, feeding the majority of the global population is going to leave a footprint. This only makes sense to evaluate in comparison to alternatives, and I think you'd be absolutely hard-pressed to come up with an alternative with fewer ecological consequences. > Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice. Absolutely no support for the latter statement. The title here is pure clickbait and does not belong here.

the_af 4y ago
Yeah, I noticed the lack for support for any of the assertions. I don't know if they are right or wrong, I'm just saying the article merely forcefully makes assertions without backing them up.
leethargo 4y ago
It's unfortunate that sources are not specified, but the methane emissions from rice paddies are well known, I believe. I didn't find absolute numbers, but OWID does list them as significant (though less than from animal): https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-ch4-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-ch4-em... I did not hear about the rice-diabetes connection before, but "golden rice" was developed specifically to deal with the nutritional deficiencies caused by rice (over)consumption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

unixgoddess 4y ago

can't read the article, but does rice include brown rice? that would be surprising

leethargo 4y ago
Brown rice might not cause diabetes (if other rice does at all), but the methane from production will be the same.

BigCryo 4y ago

Rice won't cause you to have diabetes unless you're fat generally speaking or unless you already have diabetes type 1.. the most common type of diabetes is really diabetes 2.. you get diabetes 2 when you are obese and at the same time you eat high glycemic index foods.. As far as what kind of foods will cause you to become obese, rice is probably not on the top of the list because it's a low energy density food... Problem is once you become obese and and you thereby get insulin resistance, if you eat rice then your blood sugar will go up and that's called diabetes.. So the problem is eating rice if you're fat, but if you're skinny eating rice is not going to make you fat not generally unless you eat a lot because rice is a low energy density food relatively speaking

mr_woozy 4y ago
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frumper 4y ago
I know more than a few people with type 2 diabetes, none were obese. Sometimes it just happens
- BigCryo 4y ago
  But typically only when they were elderly

briandear 4y ago

Is there actually a climate crisis? Because I’ve been told that “the end is near” for over 20 years now, and it’s like the “disaster” is just around the corner. It feels like the “crisis” is manufactured by people making money and gaining power because the end is perpetually nigh. How long is this crisis supposed to last? It seems like it’s nothing more than a totalitarian cudgel used to achieve the economic restructuring dreams of post-Soviet Marxists. Now an article claiming rice is “bad?” A staple food for most of the world’s population. If they can convince most of the world to abandon rice, that is the foot in the door for convincing anyone anything. We should stop actual pollution and stop with the carbon dioxide hysteria. Stopping CO2 isn’t cleaning waterways or building toilets, or eliminating toxic chemicals in the food chain. But there’s not power to be gained by fighting plebeian pollution like there is with a literal re-ordering of the energy industry and economy.

the_third_wave 4y ago
No, there is no climate "crisis". What there is is a changing climate which may - or may not, the models which are used to gauge what is going to happen are notoriously inaccurate - cause problems in certain regions of the world due to increasing drought or - in other regions - increased precipitation. Depending on where the climate will go in the coming centuries - and that is the time frame you have to think about, not the '10 years to extinction' which is often bandied around by climate alarmists - there is a possibility of sea level rise causing problems in lower-lying regions like Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Most of the problems which are likely to occur can be solved using technological means ranging from building or raising dikes (like the Netherlands has been doing for centuries), moving to more water-efficient methods of agriculture, building desalination plants to increase the amount of water available for agriculture, building storage reservoirs to collect runoff in the cold months for use in the warm months and more. The climate "crisis" is a political stick which is being used by various groups for their own means, some of them ideological - e.g. the economic restructuring you mentioned, viz. "green new deal" - and some of them more basic ploys to gain power. Yet others are simply attempts at using the climate scare to make money. Yes, it would be far better to concentrate on reducing actual pollution instead of chasing the CO₂ boogeyman but the movers and shakers behind the climate scare seem to have decided there is more power to be gained from whipping up the populace with tales of flooded cities and parched fields than can be achieved with the prospect of dead oceans and silent springs - probably because that has been tried before and did not manage to scare the populace into compliance with their policy schemes. While exaggerated - just like the climate scare - there is more truth to the claims of pollution being a threat to future generations than CO₂ being so. The planet has become "greener" due to the increased CO₂ level, forest cover has increased [1], agricultural yield has increased while evapotranspiration has decreased leading to higher water efficiency [2]. But... who cares when whipping up the populace gives you clicks, votes, money and power. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover-increase-world-deforestation-farming-rainforests-forests-a8486096.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0378377483900756 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037837...

the_af 4y ago

Most of the article is about how growing rice contributes negatively to climate change, and also how it's not scaling up with demand and the yields are getting lower while demand increases. However, they also make this claim: > Rice’s nutritional quality is another growing concern. The grain is high in glucose, which contributes to diabetes and obesity, and low in iron and zinc, two important micronutrients. In South Asia the prevalence of diabetes and malnutrition can be traced to over-reliance on rice. Is this true? Is South Asia's prevalence of diabetes notorious enough, and can it be traced to rice consumption? The article provides no references.

jacknews 4y ago

Where is the lab-grown rice? It seems possible in principle to use cell/tissue culture to grow only the rice (or wheat or other grass seeds) grains, rather than the whole plant. In that case just a few mega factories could feed the world.