The Study
Modern perspective of the Rice Diet for hypertension and other metabolic diseases
This study looked at what happened to a lot of people who ate a super strict rice diet a long time ago. It saw that their blood pressure went down and they lived longer — but we don’t know if the diet made them better, or if they were already getting better for other reasons.
Analysis score
Maximum 72 for a cohort study.
Where the score came from
A long-ago diet made of mostly rice, fruit, and sugar helped people with very high blood pressure and obesity get much healthier — their blood pressure dropped a lot, they lost weight fast, and many lived longer.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 554 / 100
Quality score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — losing 14.5% of body weight and dropping 45 mm Hg in blood pressure is a huge change, comparable to powerful medications today.
- 2Blood pressure dropped by 45.4 mm Hg in severe cases; people lost 1.2 kg per week; BMI dropped by 4.0 points; 71.6% of very high BP patients lived 5 years.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health
Year
2024
Authors
Romeo Sommerfeld, Paul Ermler, Jana Fehr, Benjamin Bergner, D. Lopez, S. Sanoff, F. Neelon, A. Kuo, W. McDowell, Yi-Ju Li, Smilla Fox, Abdullatif Ghajar, Elena Gensch, Cedric Lorenz, Martin Preiss, T. Richter, F. Luft, P. Klemmer, A. Bohannon, Christoph Lippert, Pao-Hwa Lin
Related Content
Claims (7)
If someone with very high blood pressure eats almost no salt, lots of carbs, and very little fat or protein for about three months, their blood pressure might drop by nearly 45 points — this diet could really help people with dangerously high blood pressure.
Eating almost no salt—less than a pinch a day—while following the Rice Diet didn’t seem to make people with high or normal blood pressure die any sooner, and most of them lived at least five years. So maybe cutting salt this much is okay even for healthy people.
If someone with very high blood pressure eats almost no salt—less than a pinch a day—their blood pressure drops, and their heart and kidneys might even start healing.
People who ate only the Rice Diet for a while ended up peeing out almost no salt, which means they were eating almost no sodium at all—and they stuck to the diet really well.
People who ate only rice for a while lost weight—on average, their body mass index dropped by 4 points—no matter if they had high blood pressure or not, meaning it worked well even for those who were otherwise healthy.
People with very high blood pressure who ate the Rice Diet were about 72% likely to live at least 5 years, while those with lower blood pressure were over 93% likely to live that long — suggesting that how high your blood pressure was at the start might affect how long you live, even if you eat this special diet.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.