from Hacker News

Rice fuels diabetes and climate crises

by leethargo on 3/29/23, 11:59 AM with 72 comments

  • by commitpizza on 3/29/23, 12:13 PM

    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.

  • by juujian on 3/29/23, 12:25 PM

    > "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.

  • by Atreiden on 3/29/23, 12:38 PM

    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.

  • by gaudat on 3/29/23, 12:10 PM

    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...

  • by lm28469 on 3/29/23, 12:13 PM

    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

  • by BigCryo on 3/29/23, 12:46 PM

    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

  • by quikoa on 3/29/23, 12:14 PM

  • by mattw2121 on 3/29/23, 12:20 PM

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

  • by mulvya on 3/29/23, 12:21 PM

    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."

  • by tw1984 on 3/29/23, 12:36 PM

    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.

  • by the_af on 3/29/23, 1:09 PM

    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.

  • by davidgl on 3/29/23, 12:37 PM

  • by mirko22 on 3/29/23, 12:35 PM

    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…

  • by jacknews on 3/29/23, 9:19 PM

    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.

  • by jna_sh on 3/29/23, 12:36 PM

    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.

  • by gpmcadam on 3/29/23, 12:05 PM

    let me guess, “eat insects”?

  • by unixgoddess on 3/29/23, 12:40 PM

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

  • by costanzaDynasty on 3/29/23, 12:21 PM

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

  • by briandear on 3/29/23, 1:01 PM

    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.