Rice does not look like an inflammatory food. In 28 randomized trials, diets that raised or lowered blood sugar spikes did not change CRP, a common blood marker of inflammation. Swapping white rice for brown made only small, mixed differences in trials. The clearer white rice concern is diabetes risk, not inflammation.
Why rice got a bad name
Rice feeds more than half of the world's population. White rice can also push up the glycemic load of a meal by a lot. Glycemic load is a measure of how much a food raises your blood sugar.
That is where the worry starts. The idea goes like this: big blood sugar spikes stir up inflammation, white rice spikes blood sugar, so white rice must be inflammatory.
Some observational data seem to back it. In a Finnish study of 756 healthy adults aged 53 to 73, each extra 50 g a day of refined grains went along with a CRP level 0.23 mg/L higher. CRP (C-reactive protein) is a protein your liver makes more of when there is inflammation in the body. But that study looked at refined grains as a group, not rice, and it only shows a link, not proof.
Does rice increase inflammation in the body?
To test the blood sugar idea, you need trials. A 2018 meta-analysis did the math. A meta-analysis pools the results of many studies. This one pooled 28 randomized trials with 2,961 adults who ate diets with a low or a high glycemic index.
In 28 trials, diets with fewer blood sugar spikes did not change CRP.From a 2018 meta-analysis in Am J Clin Nutr
Lower glycemic diets did not change hs-CRP (a sensitive version of the CRP test). They did not change TNF-alpha or IL-6 either. IL-6 and TNF-alpha are signal proteins your immune system uses to turn up inflammation.
So the first link in the chain breaks. Lowering blood sugar spikes across a whole diet did not lower these markers in trials, which makes it hard to argue that rice raises them through blood sugar.
Brown rice vs. white rice: the head-to-head trials
Some teams put the two rices side by side.
The biggest trial ran in Chennai, India. It enrolled 166 overweight adults aged 25 to 65. They ate parboiled brown rice or white rice at two meals a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months each. Blood sugar and cholesterol did not differ between the two for the group as a whole. CRP rose a little in both periods, but less on brown rice: 0.03 mg/L on brown versus 0.63 mg/L on white. The authors called it "a small benefit on inflammation."
A smaller trial in Japan followed 28 people with type 2 diabetes for 8 weeks. The brown rice diet helped blood vessel function more than white rice. CRP only "tended to improve," and the difference was not clear.
In China, 99 adults with type 2 diabetes replaced 100 g a day of white rice with germinated brown rice for 12 weeks. That is brown rice that has been soaked until it starts to sprout. Compared with people who kept their usual diet, they had lower IL-6, IL-8 and LPS, a bacterial marker, in their blood. This group did not get a white rice diet to compare with, so it is a weaker test.
What about whole grains in general?
Brown rice is a whole grain, so the wider grain research helps. It is mixed.
A 2020 meta-analysis of 14 randomized trials with 1,238 adults found that eating more whole grains did not change CRP, IL-6 or TNF-alpha overall. Benefits did show up in some groups, like people who started with high CRP. A 2022 review of 31 trials counted 12 that lowered at least one inflammation marker. CRP fell in 10 of 32 study arms that measured it.
One of the best trials, from Denmark, gave 60 adults at risk of metabolic syndrome a whole grain diet and a refined grain diet for 8 weeks each. On whole grains, CRP and IL-6 dropped. But people also ate less and lost weight, and the IL-6 drop was tied most to rye, not rice.
How you cook rice may matter for blood sugar
Cooling cooked rice changes its starch. In one trial in 15 healthy adults, white rice that was chilled for 24 hours, then reheated, had more resistant starch and caused a smaller blood sugar rise than fresh rice. Resistant starch is starch your body digests slowly. Some studies also show lower blood sugar after a meal with parboiled rice. Neither study measured inflammation.
What this means for you
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you have diabetes and take insulin or other glucose-lowering medicine and plan a big change in how much rice or other starch you eat; you have kidney disease and follow a set diet; or you have a gut condition where your care team has told you which grains to eat.
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The bottom line
Rice has been tried in court a few times now. Diets built to tame blood sugar left CRP where it was. Brown rice edged out white in one trial by a sliver, and missed in another. The wider whole grain trials mostly shrugged. Rice is not an inflammatory food in the research we can find. The real reason to go easy on big piles of white rice is blood sugar and diabetes risk, so pick your rice, mind your portion, and put your effort into the whole plate.
Common questions
Does rice increase inflammation in the body?
Not in the trials we found. A 2018 meta-analysis of 28 randomized trials found that changing the glycemic index of a diet did not change CRP, IL-6 or TNF-alpha. In a 3-month trial of 166 adults, CRP rose by just 0.63 mg/L on white rice and 0.03 mg/L on brown. That gap is small, and it came from a single trial.
Is brown rice anti-inflammatory?
Maybe a little, but the proof is thin. Brown rice edged out white rice on CRP in one trial in India. In a Japanese trial, CRP only "tended to improve" on brown rice. Germinated brown rice lowered IL-6 in 99 people with type 2 diabetes, but that trial had no white rice group. Whole grain trials overall show no clear CRP change.
Is basmati rice anti-inflammatory?
We found no trial that tested basmati rice and inflammation markers. Research on rice type mostly looks at blood sugar. A 2022 review says some studies show lower blood sugar after meals with parboiled rice, a kind of rice that is steamed in the husk. And diets that lower blood sugar spikes did not change CRP in 28 trials.
Is it OK to eat white rice every day?
For inflammation, the trials show no clear harm. For diabetes, portion matters. A 2023 meta-analysis of 28 groups with 1,527,198 people linked the highest white rice intake to an 18% higher risk of type 2 diabetes than the lowest, with moderate certainty. It found no clear link with heart disease or cancer.
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How this article was made
Researched and written from 11 peer-reviewed papers. Our automated check matched every claim against the exact words of its source, confirmed every paper exists in PubMed, and found none retracted. Checked October 31, 2026. Not individually reviewed by a doctor. Photos are illustrative; the people in them are not patients or readers.
Grades run Strong, Moderate, Emerging, Early and Not supported, and the grade decides the words we may use. How we grade evidence · Medical disclaimer
Sources
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- Systematic reviewWhole Grain Consumption and Inflammatory Markers: A Systematic Literature Review of Randomized Control Trials.Milesi G, Rangan A, Grafenauer S Nutrients, 2022.PubMedFull paper
- Meta-analysisThe effect of dietary glycemic index and glycemic load on inflammatory biomarkers: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.Milajerdi A, Saneei P, Larijani B et al. Am J Clin Nutr, 2018.PubMedFull paper
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- Randomized trialWhole grain-rich diet reduces body weight and systemic low-grade inflammation without inducing major changes of the gut microbiome: a randomised cross-over trial.Roager HM, Vogt JK, Kristensen M et al. Gut, 2019.PubMedFull paper
- Randomized trialFiber-rich diet with brown rice improves endothelial function in type 2 diabetes mellitus: A randomized controlled trial.Kondo K, Morino K, Nishio Y et al. PLoS One, 2017.PubMedFull paper
- Randomized trialWhole grain germinated brown rice regulates intestinal immune homeostasis and gastrointestinal hormones in type 2 diabetic patients-a randomized control trial.Ding Q, Ren J, Zhou Y et al. Food Funct, 2022.PubMedFull paper
- Meta-analysisWhite rice consumption and risk of cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes: A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies.Lai H, Sun M, Liu Y et al. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr, 2023.PubMedFull paper
- ObservationalThe associations between whole grain and refined grain intakes and serum C-reactive protein.Taskinen RE, Hantunen S, Tuomainen TP et al. Eur J Clin Nutr, 2022.PubMedFull paper
- Randomized trialEffect of cooling of cooked white rice on resistant starch content and glycemic response.Sonia S, Witjaksono F, Ridwan R Asia Pac J Clin Nutr, 2015.PubMedFull paper
- ReviewA perspective on the benefits of consumption of parboiled rice over brown rice for glycaemic control.Bhar S, Bose T, Dutta A et al. Eur J Nutr, 2022.PubMedFull paper
