
Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories - alexcasalboni
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/25/scientists-have-figured-out-a-simple-way-to-cook-rice-that-dramatically-cuts-the-calories/
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tremendo
They're basically turning it into resistant starch. Calorie reduction is
probably the lesser benefit of it. Resistant starch feeds the comensal
bacteria in the gut. This is "good" bacteria. Or think of these resitant
starches as the pre-biotic to your pro-biotics (the food for your bacteria
friends).

Rice is normally not the best for turning to resistant starch I believe, the
process works a lot better for potatoes: cook, then chill, voilá. Even re-
heating preserves some of the benefits. Not sure if, or how, the added coconut
oil mentioned in the article would alter the process, or make it more
effective.

~~~
will_work4tears
I've read though, that that same bacteria produces short chain fatty acids
with some non-trivial amount of calories. Also, where is this coconut oil they
are putting in going when they cool it? Wouldn't the fat from the coconut oil
counterbalance the savings by utilizing this method?

That said, I'd rather have the short chain fatty acids than the excess carbs,
so it seems a fair trade off to me.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Short chain fatty acids have a whole host of benefits. In particular, they
have anti-inflammatory effects, they improve amino acid and mineral uptake,
they improve insulin sensitivity and blood lipid regulation, the list goes on.

~~~
will_work4tears
Sure, I'm not doubting that SCFA don't have health benefits (or that Coconut
Oil doesn't), but just the claim that this rice has "half the calories" or
even significantly less. Making even all of the starch present in rice
"resistant" depending on the gut microbes present, it could be just as much
calories (2.5-4.1 according to wikipedia) from the SCFA.

So healthier, but not "less calories" really, especially with the Coconut oil
added (MCFA do have slightly less calories than LCFA, but not all of Coconut
oil consists of MCFA).

I'm all about this though, and will probably give it a try myself (I like
refried rice).

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anigbrowl
_" What we did is cook the rice as you normally do, but when the water is
boiling, before adding the raw rice, we added coconut oil—about 3 percent of
the weight of the rice you're going to cook,"_

I've never met anyone who cooks rice by boiling the water first. Maybe it's an
Indian thing, but all the people who've ever shown me 'the right way' to make
rice in SE Asian cooking, stretching from Japan to Vietnam, rinse the rice a
few times and then cook it from cold. The 'trick' for good rice is using the
right amount of water and adjusting the heat to a low simmer when it boils.

My (Asian) wife adds that she's heard of it but 'we thought that's how white
people like rice.' ¯\\(°_o)/¯

 _" After it was ready, we let it cool in the refrigerator for about 12 hours.
That's it."_

Again, who eats their rice ice-cold unless they got take out the previous
evening? Rice isn't that nice cold, nor is it absorbent enough to mop up
sauces with, which is sort of a key thing in most Asian cuisine because it's
always consumed as an accompaniment to something else, no matter how basic.

~~~
ineedtosleep
I've always joked around about Asians rinsing their rice: "The world would
save so much fresh water if Asians only rinsed their water once." My mom would
usually get mad at me since I usually rinse 1-2 times when she does around 4
rinses.

Then I asked a friend who worked at a fine dining sushi/sashimi place how much
they wash their rice. Minimum 6 washes. I guess it's not much of a joke
anymore.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I don't even count. I have a contraption I made where I put rice/beans/ect. in
and then just run the water through until the water runs clean.

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hashberry
Here is the Abstract from the actual study:

Obesity is an emerging health crisis in many developing countries. To find
food based solutions for obesity, rice resistant starch (RS) concentrations
and novel ways to increase RS concentrations were studied. A total of 38 Sri
Lankan rice varieties were tested; the RS concentrations ranged from 0.30 to
4.65%. The traditional rice varieties had significantly higher RS
concentrations than old and improved varieties. Bg 305 had the least RS
concentration out of all. However, applying different heating and cooling
conditions with pure coconut oil showed RS concentrations increased by at
least 10 times. The increase in RS content could be attributed to the increase
in RS3 and RS5 types, suggesting potential to increase these types of RS in
rice. This study results clearly show that rice, when cooked properly, could
be a good low calorie food source for obesity reduction. In-vivo glycemic
effects of RS studies are in progress.

[http://phys.org/news/2015-03-low-calorie-rice-
obesity.html](http://phys.org/news/2015-03-low-calorie-rice-obesity.html)

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farresito
If I'm going to eat rice, it's because of the carbs it has, so I'm fine with
the amount of calories it has, but I see how it can be useful for certain
people.

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jrapdx3
This article provokes more questions than it answers. While I got the general
idea about creating more Resistant Starch, the details about the
transformation from digestible to resistant is kind of murky. Perhaps seeing
the data in the source publication would make it clearer but the full report
isn't readily available.

Furthermore, the effects and benefits of the cooking method are also unclear.
Obesity is no doubt the most complex problem in all medical science to unravel
as every body system is implicated in its origin and continuation. Obesity
treatment is extremely difficult because of the tremendous level of
parallelism inherent in the processes of energy storage and utilization.

For this research to be pragmatically significant, it needs to be convincingly
shown that consuming this rice vs that rice matters, and that this single
change produces a difference in adiposity. My experience as an obesity
treatment specialist suggests it's unlikely that will happen.

A problem resulting from thousands of contributing (and highly variable)
factors is not going to be solved by altering some small subset of elements.
Understanding the nature of the problem is a herculean task. But until a
clearer picture emerges, all we will do is nibble at the edges.

------
zdean
There are people around the world starving because they don't have access to
enough calories and we're trying to figure out how to reduce the caloric
values of foods. At the same time we're coming up with stuff like Soylent
because we're worried that we're using too much of our resources to produce
foods. What a strange set of circumstances.

Perhaps a less revolutionary idea to reduce the calories in the rice you eat
by 50%: eat 50% less rice.

~~~
Splendor
While simply eating less works for most people I think this is a little
dismissive of other factors at work in the obesity epidemic.

~~~
dublinben
>eating less works for most people

Eating less actually works for _all_ people, it's just hard to commit to.
Restricting calories is uncomfortable.

~~~
rayiner
I had a professor in college whose field of expertise was designing cockpits.
She liked to say that if the pilot pushes the wrong button and crashes the
plane, it's your fault as the cockpit designer that it was possible to make
that mistake.

~~~
npsimons
I like to say if a pilot (person) starts firing bullets into the engines (eats
too much) and crashes the plane (suffers the effects of ill health), then it's
probably the pilot's fault for thinking the laws of physics don't apply to
them. Unfortunately, our bodies aren't designed, and while they evolved many
failsafes, it takes some conscious control not to mess them up.

~~~
delg
That's a terrible analogy. A huge proportion of well-intentioned pilots are
crashing their planes.

~~~
npsimons
I wouldn't call firing bullets into the engine (overeating on a regular enough
basis to get obese) well intentioned.

~~~
delg
Okay, so instead let's look at people who have lost weight (well-trained
pilots) trying to maintain their loss. They fail miserably. Very low success
rate. Among a large population. So not a rogue pilot with a machine gun,
instead the majority of successful weight losers.

The advice "eat less move more" is a proven loser. Not really even a question.
Time to move on. Maybe low carb/IF/less time-consuming HIIT will do better.
But we know move more, eat less has failed. Being more smug about the fact it
would work if only all these dummy pilots would use it right isn't going to
improve the public health success rate.

------
petemill
'Wait 12 hours' might sound simple, but it's not very practical...

~~~
dragonwriter
> 'Wait 12 hours' might sound simple, but it's not very practical...

Its quite practical in a place where refrigerators are available. I suspect
many of the places where rice is a staple food and transition from bare
subsistence to a more robust living standard in a historically short period of
time has resulted in an upswing of obesity as eating habits adapted to up and
down cycles don't work as well with stronger and longer up cycles probably see
a substantial overlap between the population this would hope to serve and the
population for which refrigerating prepared food for 12 hours before consuming
isn't a completely unrealistic prep step, even if its not something you'd do
at home every meal.

And even to the extent it is, part of what they've said is that they are
looking into how this could be developed into a pre-consumer process.

------
wyc
On the topic of changing how foods affect us via preparation, this (somewhat
click-baity) article talks about how refrigeration of cooked pasta could
reduce glucose spikes from its consumption:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761)

Both articles sound borderline one-weird-trick to me, but the explanations are
plausible.

------
odiroot
It would be great if it really worked as advertised. You could easily make
low-carb sushi.

------
PerfectElement
> China and India, which are already seeing rising obesity problems, are huge
> consumers of rice.

Are there any studies linking rice consumption to higher obesity rates?

AFAIK, these populations have relied on rice for ages and their obesity rates
have only spiked recently.

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orky56
A lot of people still struggle with portion control and this method will give
hope to many people. Calorie-dense foods psychologically bring us comfort so
this will allow people to continue to eat them while still cutting calories.
In the end, this translates to real weight loss assuming people don't pile on
the calories elsewhere.

~~~
npsimons
_Calorie-dense foods psychologically bring us comfort_

Am I the only one disturbed by this statement? Sure, many people are
_conditioned_ to get emotional comfort from eating, but I've seen no evidence
it's hard wired. I'm not saying one should hate food, but I find it as
unhealthy to have a relationship with food where you use it to fill an
emotional void, and I suspect it's a major cause of obesity in places like
America. If an obese person lost their emotional attachment to food and
stopped eating unconsciously, I'd be surprised if they didn't drop to a
healthy weight.

~~~
VLM
Some google work indicates the "comfort food" meme of people are comforted by
extremely high carb mostly starchy foods was invented in 1977. Its been a
popular meme and has already settled into eternal common knowledge despite
being less than 40 years old.

None the less the concept is going to seem weird to people roughly older than
the meme and self evident to everyone younger.

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oswego
I can't find details on their process, but I wonder if they bothered to
compare their results to hot water washing the rice prior to putting it into
the boil water. I do this every time and I notice a mega amount of starch is
taken away. It would be rather sad if they didn't account for this.

~~~
Vraxx
I don't know for certain whether or not they accounted for it, but I'm
inclined to believe that your suggestion isn't the contributing factor to the
reduced calories. I've read about this effect before, except with reheated
pasta instead of rice (both seem rather similar to me) and the pasta was due
to the resistant starches as well. This is the article that I read it in
before [0].

[0]:[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761)

------
crazygringo
Or you could just eat half as much rice?

Plus, eating half as much works with _all_ foods, not just rice! :)

~~~
CardenB
But then you are twice as hungry

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adhammad88
It is probably impossible to pick the best cookbook of all time, but I think
the paleo recipe book is the best for me , Prepare easy and healthy meals with
the Paleo Recipe Book. Over 370 recipes covering just about anything you'll
ever need on a Paleo diet .

for more info click the link :

[http://www.paleorecipebookview.com/](http://www.paleorecipebookview.com/)

------
npsimons
Or, you could, I don't know, _just not each as much_ . . .

~~~
buckbova
What if you are making a rice based dessert and wanted a lower calorie
ingredient but not take away from the taste or texture? Problem solved.

~~~
npsimons
Eat less of the dessert; savor each bite. People who inhale a whole pint of
ice cream in less than 10 minutes are the problem, and no amount of lo-cal
will help them; they'll just eat more. For a large number of obese, it's not
about being full, it's about eating to distraction, or eating unconsciously,
or to fill an emotional need.

~~~
buckbova
So if I'm making a rice dessert dish for a party, that's typically served cold
anyway, I should make no attempt to make it healthier? Instead I should tell
everyone not to eat (much of) it?

If there's no change in flavor or texture, this preparation seems like a win
win.

