Lower calorie rice - do you buy this?

natacos

Hi - this is old news apparently (all articles I found around the subject from spring 2015) but I've only just heard about it - a cooking hack that reduces the calorie content of rice by transforming some of the starch to "resistant starch" by adding oil? A few links explaining:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/acs-nlr021915.php
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/25/scientists-have-figured-out-a-simple-way-to-cook-rice-that-dramatically-cuts-the-calories/?utm_term=.574b8a9ac4d0
http://time.com/3754097/rice-calories-resistant-starch/

I'm no scientist - it sounds somewhat believable but I'm skeptical. Do you believe it?

Also these articles seem to leave it at the status of "more testing required" but I can't seem to find any research on this past 2015.

stanmann571

If you actually read the articles, It's not really all that simple, or easy. And yeah, it appears to work.

natacos

stanmann571 wrote: »

If you actually read the articles, It's not really all that simple, or easy. And yeah, it appears to work.

I did read the articles (that's why I posted about them) and I didn't say anything about it being simple or easy (although, from what I get out of the articles, the cooking process DOES sound easy, while the science behind how it works sounds complex to me). I guess my concern is that the amount of testing they'd done at that stage seemed immature and I wasn't convinced of the evidence (and can't find evidence of development in the testing since those articles were published) - you say it appears to work - on what are you basing that?

OhMsDiva

I found it quite interesting. I have heard a couple of my coworkers say they soak rice before cooking it to get some of the starch out, but I had not heard of this. I does not seem difficult to me. I cook my rice with olive oil, but only to replace butter. I wonder if it has to be coconut oil. I do not eat rice a lot, but I would give this method a try.

JeromeBarry1

I posted about that a couple of years ago. It was the same study done by some folks in India. The oil used is immaterial to the conversion of digestible starch to indigestible starch which is resistant to small intestine digestion. The bacteria in your bowel do break down and digest the resistant starch, and those bacteria do consume the energy thus released.

In the big scheme of things, it's more trouble to achieve than it's worth. However, if you plan on prepping several days of rice or pasta you might be able to make it work.

I've seen no evidence that rapidly freezing starchy foods allows the conversion to occur. That is, your starchy TV dinners are not known to be resistant starch.

kimny72

The main reason I'm skeptical is because they've been talking about this for several years, but I still don't hear anyone telling us we should be cooking our rice this way.

When I first started hearing about resistant starch, it was just that you could cook rice, pasta, or potatoes and then refrigerate it to create more resistant starch. And that it "may" reduce the calories by 10%. The coconut oil is a new angle for me, and just the fact that coconut oil has been adopted by the "magical foods wellness industry", that makes me distrust it more.

I eat a decent amount of carbs, and rarely eat as much as 500 cals of rice, potatoes, or pasta per day, so I can't imagine remembering to cook it ahead of time to save maybe 40 calories in a day (the article claiming 50% reduction seems to be banking on pie-in-the-sky best case scenarios). Unfortunately, it seems like they expect different types will create different amounts of resistant starch, and I have yet to see any research showing definitively how many cals you would actually be saving, so at best you might use this to buy yourself a little extra wiggle room if you are struggling to stick to your calorie budget.