How to cook rice to help you lose weight
Add coconut oil equal to 3% of the amount of rice before adding water. Once cooked, place the rice in the refrigerator and reheat in the microwave before eating.
According toSA, a cup of rice contains about 240 calories that can quickly turn into body fat if not burned. Two scientists, Sudhair James and Pushparajah Thavarajah from the College of Chemical Sciences of Sri Lanka, have studied a simple way of cooking rice that can reduce its calories by 50%, bringing many health benefits.
In fact, not all starches are created equal, Sudhair James explained at the recent American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition. There are two main types: Digestible starches are stored as fat when not used up by the body, and resistant starches are not broken down into glucose in the stomach, so they are lower in calories. Instead, resistant starches pass through the large intestine and act like fiber, providing many benefits to the gut.
The team tested eight ways of cooking rice on 38 varieties of rice. They found that adding a fat like coconut oil before cooking, then cooling the rice immediately, could change the starch composition, making the rice contain more resistant starch.
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Starchy foods like rice can contain a lot of resistant starch depending on how we cook it. Photo:WH |
Scientists added an amount of coconut oil equal to about 3% of the amount of rice cooked before adding water, equivalent to about a teaspoon for half a can of rice. After cooking, they put the rice in the refrigerator for about 12 hours. Before eating, they reheated the rice in the microwave.
In this method, the coconut oil works by interacting with the starch molecules and changing their structure. When cooled for 12 hours, the hydrogen bonds between the molecules on the outside of the rice grain are bonded together, turning it into resistant starch. Reheating the rice afterwards will not change the amount of resistant starch that has formed.
Many starchy foods, such as potatoes and rice, contain more resistant starch depending on how they are cooked. Researchers have previously found that fried rice and pilaf-style rice (rice cooked in broth) contain more resistant starch than regular steamed rice.
James and Thavarajah are starting to test the process on a natural rice variety called Suduru Samba, which they believe will reduce the amount of calories consumed by the body by 50 to 60 percent when cooked into rice by any method.
