Why your rice might be risky — and how to make it safer
Assessing Cancer Risk from Wheat and Rice Based Diets in Arsenic Endemic Regions of the Middle Ganga Plain, India: Identification of Hotspots and Risk Reduction Strategies
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Rice grown in some parts of India has a lot of poison called arsenic in it, more than wheat. But if you pick short plants or rinse the grains before cooking, you can get much less poison.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
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Evidence Score
A snapshot of a population at a single point in time. Can identify correlations and prevalence, but cannot determine the direction of cause and effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Rice grown in some parts of India has a lot of poison called arsenic in it, more than wheat. But if you pick short plants or rinse the grains before cooking, you can get much less poison.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 540 / 44
Evidence Score
A snapshot of a population at a single point in time. Can identify correlations and prevalence, but cannot determine the direction of cause and effect.
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Claims (7)
If you soak your rice in water overnight and then throw out that water before cooking, you’ll end up with rice that has less of the harmful arsenic your body can absorb.
Scientists found that shorter, stockier types of wheat and rice soak up about half as much toxic arsenic from the soil as the tall, slow-growing kinds—so breeding these shorter crops could help people in dirty areas eat safer food.
In parts of India where the water and soil are naturally polluted with arsenic, rice soaks up way more of this toxic stuff than wheat does—so people who eat a lot of rice are getting more arsenic in their bodies than those who eat wheat.
When wheat grows in soil with lots of arsenic, it makes more of certain natural chemicals (like benzoic and caffeic acid) that might help it deal with the poison—so the more arsenic it absorbs, the more of these chemicals it produces.
If you eat a lot of rice and wheat and cook with water that has arsenic in it, computer models suggest you might be over 80 times more likely to get cancer than the average person in the U.S.—but this is just a prediction, not something scientists have actually seen happen yet.