Mention rice to a person trying to lose weight and chances are, they’ll look at you as if you’ve declared that the earth is flat. Over the years, rice has been vilified and seen as the evil carbohydrate that leads you to pile on the kilos. So, is rice good for you?
According to celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar, who just chose to champion rice in a social media post, it is. Rujuta, who has always advocated ditching imported goji berry in favour of the local gooseberry, is responsible for the fabulous physiques of celebrities like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Alia Bhatt. She sheds light on not only the ways rice benefits your health, hair and skin, but also on how it affects the ecology and local communities.
Here are the 10 benefits of eating rice, according to Rujuta Diwekar:
1. Rice is a prebiotic. It feeds not just you, but the diverse ecosystem of microbes within you.
2. Hand-milled, single polished rice can be cooked in versatile ways from kanji to kheer and everything in between.
3. Consuming rice leads to steady blood sugar response when you eat like the way Indians (and native cultures across the globe) eat it — with pulses, curd, kadhi, legumes, ghee and even meat. And yes, diabetics can eat this too. There is no link between rice and metabolic syndrome.
4. It makes for the easiest and lightest dinner meal ever. It leads to restorative sleep, which further leads to better hormonal balance. This is especially required in the ageing and the very young.
5. It’s great for the skin — it gets rid of enlarged pores that come with high prolactin levels. It also sustains and improves hair growth that an impaired thyroid may have damaged.
6. Rice consuming societies are more gender equal.
7. You can make rangoli out of it.
8. Every part of rice is usable — bran is fed to cattle.
9. It leaves behind adequate moisture in soil to grow pulses, which then enrich the soil further by working as natural nitrogen fixtures.
10. It’s grandmom-approved — it’s local, seasonal and belongs to your food heritage. It sustains health, economy and ecology.
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