New Cooking Method for Rice Cuts Calories in Half

COLLEGE OF CHEMICAL SCIENCES, RAJAGIRIYA, SRI LANKA. A team of scientists at the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka have developed a simple method to cook rice and reduce the calorie content by 50-60 percent. What they did was add coconut oil to boiling water, before adding the raw rice for cooking. After cooking, the rice was chilled in the refrigerator for 12 hours. That is all!

This method not only cuts down the calories, but also has a number of health benefits. Sudhair James, a team leader in this study, explains that this cooking technique can improve the glycaemic response, speed up lipid metabolism and boost immune function.

Rice, being the major staple food for about 65% of humanity, is a non-expensive, readily available and easily used grain. Hence, researchers in Sri Lanka aimed their studies at finding a way to decrease the starchy content of rice to help stop the globally rising obesity epidemic. “Because obesity is a growing health problem, especially in many developing countries, we wanted to find food-based solutions,” said James.

The chemistry behind this method works to transform some of the starch present in rice into a non-digestible form called resistant starch (RS). Starch is completely digested in the small intestine to produce glucose (sugar) which is then absorbed into the bloodstream for energy production or storage in the body. RS, on the other hand, is not digested and acts like a dietary fiber. You are still enjoying the same rice, but the starch content and calorie intake is much lower.

Researchers have experimented with 38 varieties of rice, with some varieties showing a higher RS content than others. Further experiments will include different types of oils. Anyone can try this method at home but according to James, results may differ depending on the variety of rice used. Future studies may target other popular starchy foods like bread, for example.

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