Back to brown: how a shift away from refined white rice could cut diabetes

Six varieties of brown rice, which contains more fibre and magnesium than white varieties, and can lower the risk of diabetes in a rice-heavy diet. Photograph: Francesco Tonelli/Alamy

A plan to develop a new breed of iron-rich rice that could ward off disease was swiftly abandoned by Dr Sirimal Premakumara after he ventured into the countryside of Sri Lanka – and found it already existed.

The secret to injecting more nutrition into the common diet, he discovered, were already there in the varieties of rice the country’s farmers had been growing for centuries.