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Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#21

Post by npsimons »

orky56 wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#23

Post by 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

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#24

Post by deeviant »

zdean wrote: post #3

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…

What amazingly useful logic. Why didn't somebody think of that before.

We can employ in all sorts of use cases:

* Solve global hunger problems? Give starving people more food. * End crime? Just everybody stop committing crimes. * Debilitating OCD? Just stop washing your hands.

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#25

Post by semi-extrinsic »

dragonwriter wrote: post #10
dublinben wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>eating less works for most people Eating less actually works for all people, it's just hard to commit to. Restricting calories is uncomfortable.

> Eating less actually works for all people, it's just hard to commit to. If people are less able to comply with a program than an alternative program, then the first program, in fact, works less well (if it can even be said to work at all) for them. So the two halves of this statement are opposed.

The problem is when some people claim that they just become overweight because of their genes, and are unable to lose weight by eating less. This is a stupid statement which is proven false by basic thermodynamics, and this should be pointed out.

If you look at statistics from Europe at the end of WW2, or from the late 1930s in the US, how many obese people were there? Pretty much zero, because food was scarce.

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#26

Post by EliRivers »

dragonwriter wrote: post #9
zdean wrote: post #3

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…

> 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. We're also trying to figure out how to increase the nutritional values of foods that tend to be available to areas where inadequate food supplies are problematic (e.g., cassava.) Different groups of people have different, and often opposite, problems,…

Real people are eating too much rice. This problem can be addressed by eating less rice.

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#27

Post by 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

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

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#28

Post by mekoka »

anigbrowl wrote: post #16

"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 th…

> Again, who eats their rice ice-cold unless they got take out the previous evening?

According to many, the best fried rice is made with cooked refrigerated rice. Also, there's this excerpt in the article "Chilling the rice then helps foster the conversion of starches. The result is a healthier serving, even when you heat it back up."

Re: Scientists have discovered a simple way to cook rice that cuts the calories

#29

Post by pbreit »

mekoka wrote: post #28
anigbrowl wrote: post #16

"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 th…

> Again, who eats their rice ice-cold unless they got take out the previous evening? According to many, the best fried rice is made with cooked refrigerated rice. Also, there's this excerpt in the article "Chilling the rice then helps foster the conversion of starches. The result is a healthier serving, even when you heat it back up."

Is it OK to heat it back up?

Still not convinced that turning a 30 minute process into a 12 hour one is "simple".

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