White Rice Intake and Incident Diabetes: A Study of 132,373 Participants in 21 Countries.

OBJECTIVE Previous prospective studies on the association of white rice intake with incident diabetes have shown contradictory results but were conducted in single countries and predominantly in Asia. We report on the association of white rice with risk of diabetes in the multinational Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data on 132,373 individuals aged 35–70 years, from 21 countries were analyzed. White rice consumption (cooked) was categorized as RESULTS During a mean follow-up period of 9.5 years, 6,129 individuals without baseline diabetes developed incident diabetes. In the overall cohort, higher intake of white rice (≥450 g/day compared with CONCLUSIONS Higher consumption of white rice is associated with an increased risk of incident diabetes with the strongest association being observed in South Asia, while in other regions, a modest, nonsignificant association was seen.