White Rice vs. Brown Rice: The Truth May Surprise You | EP 394.C

Summary

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Podcast Summary: White Rice vs. Brown Rice: The Truth May Surprise You

The Dr. Gundry Podcast | EP 394.C (March 13, 2026)
Host: Dr. Steven Gundry
Length: ~20 minutes (excluding ads and outro)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Gundry tackles one of the most hotly debated topics in nutrition: Is white rice truly healthier than brown rice? By drawing on decades of clinical experience and cross-cultural research, he dissects common myths about rice, lectins, blood sugar, and carbohydrate choices. Listeners receive clear, actionable advice on how to enjoy rice more safely—and when it may be best avoided.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Global Importance of Rice & Core Question

• [01:15] Dr. Gundry emphasizes rice as a human staple: "There's about 4 billion people in the world who use rice as their staple carbohydrate."
• He sets up the main debate: white rice vs. brown rice health effects.

2. Lectins: Why White is Preferred Over Brown

• [01:45] Lectins (potentially harmful plant proteins) are concentrated in the hull (outer layer) of the rice grain.
  • "With the exception of gluten, most of the lectins are in the hull. White rice is better than brown rice because the hull's been removed."
• Throughout history, cultures have figured out how to "detoxify" staple foods. Removing the hull from rice is one such cultural adaptation.
• Story of a Japanese patient with severe rheumatoid arthritis dramatically improving after switching from brown to white Indian basmati rice.
  • "She started eating the Plant Paradox. And one of the first things she did was stop eating brown rice... her pain went away, her rheumatoid arthritis markers went away..." [03:30]
• Not all lectins are bad, but minimizing them is especially important for those with autoimmune issues.

3. Wild Rice & Basmati Varieties: Not All Rice Is Equal

• [06:10] Wild rice (technically a grass) usually has fewer lectins than brown rice, but quantity and cost limit its impact.
• Critical distinction between Indian and American white basmati rice:
  • Indian basmati: "a very low, slow to digest starch," creating more resistant starch beneficial for gut health.
  • American basmati: digested rapidly, spikes blood sugar.
  • Quote: "The exact same bowl will have totally different effects on your blood sugar... Please look for white basmati rice from India rather than American basmati rice." [07:40]

4. Resistant Starch & Safer Rice Preparation Tips

• [11:02] Cooking rice, then cooling it (and optionally reheating) increases resistant starch, which feeds gut microbiota and lowers glycemic impact.
  • "You can take any rice and make it more resistant starch by cooking the rice and then cooling it. And that increases the amount of resistant starch. Then you can reheat it." [11:12]
• Traditional practices in Japan, China, and India involve batch-cooking rice and letting it cool over several days, increasing resistant starch content.
• Fermentation also reduces lectin content, a trick used by cultures with quinoa and other grains.
• Fermented rice and sake: Fermentation usually neutralizes lectins in rice, but not gluten in wheat/barley.

5. Blood Sugar, Insulin, and Triglycerides

• [14:50] Blood sugar spikes depend on rice type and preparation method.
  • Processed forms (e.g., rice flour) spike blood sugar most.
  • Indian basmati and cooled rice are safer choices for many.
• Dr. Gundry: "The most, to me, important number on your cholesterol panel... is your triglycerides." [16:02]
• Personal anecdote: eating sorghum popcorn (lectin-free) raised his triglycerides, highlighting how all rapidly digestible starches can increase blood lipids—even "healthy" ones.
• Those with insulin resistance, diabetes, or fasting insulin >9 should avoid rice regardless of type/preparation.

6. Bio-Individual Responses & Practical Advice

• Individual metabolic differences matter:
  • "I do have people who can tolerate rice... If you have insulin resistance, diabetes or prediabetes, if you have a fasting insulin level above 9, then rice, no matter how you cook it, is not your friend. On the other hand, if you're one of the lucky ones... properly cooked, properly selected rice can be an additional part of the diet." [17:40]

7. Listener Q&A: Emulsifiers & Leaky Gut

• [18:27] Question: Do emulsifiers in peanut butter cause leaky gut?
  • Dr. Gundry: "Emulsifiers are designed to emulsify things like the mucus layer that lines your gut... emulsifiers have been tied to breaking down that mucus layer."
  • But primary concern is peanut lectins: "It's the peanut butter that's breaking down your leaky gut." [18:45]
  • Memorable stat: "95% of humans contain an antibody to the peanut lectin."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On traditional rice processing: "Why do cultures always try to detoxify their food that they live on? And smart cultures always take the hull off of brown rice because that's where most of the lectins are." [03:11]
• On white vs. brown rice nutrition dogma: "Brown rice is not a health food, just like whole wheat is not a health food." [05:14]
• On food preparation wisdom: "Part of what I've done over the last 30 years is go around the world finding out how very healthy people have made a potentially unhealthy food healthy." [11:56]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:15 – Rice as a global staple and discussion kickoff
• 01:45 – Lectins in rice hull; why white rice is safer
• 03:30 – Japanese patient’s recovery linked to switching from brown to white rice
• 06:10 – Wild rice and Indian vs. American basmati differences
• 11:02 – Food sensitivity, pressure cooking, and creating resistant starch
• 14:50 – Blood sugar impact of rice types and preparation
• 16:02 – Triglycerides as critical health marker; personal experimentation
• 17:40 – Who should avoid rice and when it can be safe
• 18:27 – Q&A: Emulsifiers, peanut butter, and leaky gut

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Final Takeaways

• White rice, especially Indian basmati, is often safer than brown rice—primarily due to lower lectin content.
• How rice is prepared (pressure cooking, cooling, fermenting) significantly alters its impact on health.
• Blood sugar and triglyceride effects are highly individual—monitor your response, especially if you have metabolic concerns.
• Traditional food wisdom—from removing hulls to fermenting grains—often has scientific merit.

Dr. Gundry’s core message: Question mainstream nutrition advice, consider cultural and individual differences, and use modern science and traditional practices to make staples like rice healthier.

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Transcript

[A]

Let's talk about rice. It's a staple in pretty much every culture on the planet. And honestly, I get it. But not all rice is created equal. And today I'm breaking down what you need to know before your next bowl. So stay tuned. Doctor Gundry here. I want to give a big thanks to all of you who are listening to my podcast right now. To show my thanks, we're giving listeners the chance to win free Gundry MD products formulas designed to support gut health, inflammation, energy and healthy aging. Here's all you need to do. Leave a positive review for this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Then take a screenshot of your review and email it to podcastr gundry.com that's it. You'll be entered for a chance to win a free prize that can help support your health from the inside out. So don't overthink it. Leave a review, send the screenshot, and you could be our next winner.

[B]

I want to go through some of your burning questions about rice, and I brought four types of rice and I thought we'd go through. Who's your friend? Who's not your friend? First question, what does rice do in your body? Well, rice has been around for 8,000 years. It's been cultivated by humans for 8,000 years. What I assure my patients is that there's about 4 billion people in the world who use rice as their staple carbohydrate. So that's a lot of people. A lot of people say, why do you say white is better than brown? Well, one of the main reasons is that rice does have lectin, but it's primarily in the hull. Most grains, most of the lectins, with the exception of gluten, are in the hall. The outside part, white rice is better than brown rice because the hull's been removed. As I point out, the hull from rice has been removed for 8,000 years. Four billion people use rice as their staple, and yet 4 billion people remove the hull from rice and eat it white. Why? Because the mischief, believe it or not, is in the hall. As I wrote about in the Plant Paradox, I take care of a woman from Japan who is a very famous health influencers representative in Japan. And this poor woman had severe rheumatoid arthritis and she followed this person's diet to a T. It's an ayurvedic diet. And yet she had already in her mid-20s, had two hip replacements and she was basically bedridden. A colleague of hers from Canada had read my book and he sent the Plant Paradox to this Woman. And she started eating the plant paradox. And one of the first things she did was stop eating brown rice, which was part of her diet, and she substituted Indian white basmati rice. Lo and behold, her pain went away, her rheumatoid arthritis markers went away, and she actually flew to Palm Springs and walked through the door and gave me a big hug for changing her life. How did I know? Well, because I've spent 30 years now studying where lectins are, the effects they have on autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. And again, why do cultures always try to detoxify their food that they live on? And smart cultures always take the haul off of brown rice because that's where most of the lectins are. Now, there are still some lectins in rice, white rice, but you can usually take care of that with a pressure cooker. So brown rice is not a health food, just like whole wheat is not a health food. Wheat was first grown 10,000, 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, which is where Iran is now. And from day one, people always tried to mill the hull off of wheat to make it whiter. In fact, there were debates in ancient Greece and Rome about who had the whitest wheat. It turns out it was Egypt. In ancient England, only the rich got white flour, and the whole flour was reserved for the peasants. Why? Because only the rich could afford to have their flour milled. So all cultures have figured out a way to get rid of the hull, and rice is no exception. Now, there is some debate as to whether wild rice, which is a grass, and quite frankly, these are grass seeds. Does wild rice have a lecta? There is a mixed bag as to whether these have lectins, but wild rice usually has far less lectin content than brown rice. And in general, you're not going to use as much wild rice, number one, because it's expensive than you would in using these. So in general, I ask people to just avoid these two rices. In general. Okay, you hear me talk about basmati rice. So here's the bad news. There is white basmati rice from India, and it says Indian basmati long grain white rice. There is American white basmati rice, California. Unfortunately, our basmati rice is a totally different strain than Indian basmati rice. So what? Indian basmati rice has a very low, slow to digest starch. So it's a very resistant starch. On the other hand, American basmati rice, even though they're both called basmati, has a very quick digested starch. So the exact same bowl will have totally different effects on, number one, your blood sugar. But more importantly, the longer a starch takes to digest, the more likely that those long stuck together starch molecules will make it past our small intestine and will arrive down in our large bowel, our colon, where our gut buddies are waiting to eat it. And so if you're going to have rice, please look for white basmati rice from India rather than American basmati rice. And I don't know if the camera can see this, but you can see that they're actually totally different looking. They don't even look like the same grain of rice because they're not. They're really totally different, even though they have the same name.

[A]

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[B]

If I have some people who absolutely do have food sensitivities to rice, they have to have white rice. But then they also have to pressure cook most people. Once you get the haul off of rice. It's usually safe as long as you use basmati rice. Finally, even though this has more resistant starch than this, you can take any rice and make it more resistant starch by cooking the rice and then cooling it. And that increases the amount of resistant starch. Then you can reheat it. In fact, interestingly enough, in both Japan and China and India, most people cook their rice on a weekend in a rice cooker. And I have a rice cooker, then they set it aside, they set it out and they dole out the rice every day sitting out on the counter, cooled. And I always was curious, well, why do they do that? Why don't they just, you know, eat it? Because they've made it resistant throughout the week by it sitting out at room temperature. Cultures are very clever. And part of what I've done over the last 30 years is go around the world finding out how very healthy people have made a potentially unhealthy food healthy. And that's what they do. Now, what about fermented rice? Well, anytime you ferment a grain, you're going to eat a lot of the lectins. For instance, the Incas, it's true, they used quinoa as their main starch. But what most people don't know is that even the Incas knew how bad it was for them. So they detoxified it. What did they do? They let it rot. They mixed it with water, then they allowed it to ferment, then they cooked it. So they knew this trick. And unfortunately it's not on the package directions. Again, most Asians know to take the hull off of rice because that's where the trouble. Now how about sake is another question. Rice wine. Again, anytime you ferment a beverage like rice wine, you've taken the lectins out of the equation. There's one exception. Sadly, fermentation does not break down gluten, which is a lectin. Believe me, it's been tried, it's been experimented with, and sadly, in my patients experience, even a pressure cooker will not break glass gluten into safe compounds. So that's why beer, which is a fermented, usually wheat based product, still is mischievous to me. My patients. Another question I get, does rice spike blood sugar? Well, again, it's depending on the type of rice that you use. Regular rice cooked in a regular way will absolutely spike your blood sugar. If you grind up rice into a powder like rice flour, it mainlines sugar. But the more you can make rice resistant to digestion by cooking it using a highly resistant starch rice like white basmati rice from India. It's pretty safe. But having said it's safe doesn't mean it's a great idea. Why? As I've mentioned before, the most to me important number on your cholesterol panel isn't your total cholesterol, isn't your ldl, the so called bad cholesterol, isn't even your hdl, the so called good cholesterol, it's your triglycerides. Why? Because triglycerides are the first form of fat that we manufacture from sugar and starches. And the higher people eat starches that are easily broken down, the higher their triglycerides go. I'll give you a great example years ago when I discovered that sorghum and millet do not have lectins because they have no hull. I'm a big fan of sorghum popcorn for my patients who want popcorn made out of corn. Smells like popcorn, tastes like popcorn as the mouth feel of popcorn, but it's little bitty looking popcorn like anything else. I decided to do a test. So for two weeks I had one cup of sorghum popcorn as my treat before dinner. And I measured my triglycerides before I started and then I measured my triglycerides two weeks later. Now I tend to run my triglycerides quite low. My range for my patients is 40 to 50, so mine were about 45. Two weeks into just adding sorghum popcorn to my diet, my triglycerides went to 128. I did nothing else different. Why? Because anytime we take a starch and then make it more available to digestion through popping, for instance, we expose all those starch molecules to easy digestion and that spikes our sugar and we convert it into triglycerides. So for me, even though it doesn't have any lectins, that was a bad choice. Now my wife on the other hand, doesn't rapidly convert these carbohydrates into triglycerides. So she can sit there munching her popcorn made out of sorghum with me drooling at her and have a different effect. I do have people who can tolerate rice. If you have insulin resistance, if you have diabetes or pre diabetes, if you have a fasting insulin level above 9, then rice, no matter how you cook it, is not your friend. On the other hand, if you're one of the lucky ones like my wife, then properly cooked, properly selected, rice can be an additional part of the diet.

[A]

Now a question from @Smith05W on YouTube. On my episode about the types of arthritis they asked, I've watched a YouTube video that said emulsifiers, like what is in peanut butter, causes a leaky gut. Is this accurate? Well, yes, believe it or not, emulsifiers are designed to emulsify things like the mucus layer that lines your gut. And yes, emulsifiers have been tied to breaking down that mucus layer. But if you're eating peanut butter, it's the peanut butter that's breaking down your leaky gut. Because of the lectin content, 95% of Americans, actually humans, contain an antibody to the peanut lectin. And it's a really good way to have leaky gut. So ditch the peanut butter. Whether or not it's got emulsifiers. Great question. Now it's time for a review from Urecuscrazy. He gives the podcast five stars and says Dr. Gundry is awesome, giving life changing health tips and hacks that will change your health for the better. Well, thank you very much and thank you for the stars. You know, I have been learning from my patients six days a week for over 25 years now. And what I learned from them, I'm happy to pass on to you and I'm glad it helped.

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