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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

#31

Post by ineedtosleep »

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…

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.

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

#32

Post by will_work4tears »

tremendo wrote: post #18

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:…

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.

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

#34

Post by peterwwillis »

petemill wrote: post #8

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

It works well with rice cookers with delay timers (which are as cheap as $35). You prepare the rice the night before and put it in the rice cooker, then set the delay timer to right before you wake up. Once you wake up, put the cooked rice into a container and into the fridge; when you return home it's done.

You can cycle this process every 12 hours by having new rice on a delay when you leave for work, so it's cooked when you return home and you can put that in the fridge for the morning or lunch. It may not be 12 hours exactly but it's close. Or just save big batches.

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

#35

Post by odiroot »

will_work4tears wrote: post #32
tremendo wrote: post #18

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:…

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.

I'm not sure if you get anything (nutritious) back from the bacteria but from coconut oil you go medium-chain way which as far as I remember means pure ketones.

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

#36

Post by mod »

EliRivers wrote: post #26
dragonwriter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

(Many) Real people are not good at controlling themselves and eating less volume of food. This problem can be addressed by eating food with fewer calories by volume.

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

#37

Post by VLM »

npsimons wrote: post #21
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 Ameri…

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.

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

#38

Post by Lawtonfogle »

EliRivers wrote: post #26
dragonwriter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is like pushing abstinence education to end teen pregnancy.

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

#39

Post by Lawtonfogle »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #31
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…

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.

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.

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

#40

Post by VLM »

EliRivers wrote: post #26
dragonwriter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Something I don't understand about the problem is rice is junk food, empty calories, but at least some of the stuff people traditionally eat with rice is really good for you. So I kind of limit my carb intake while dumping more good stuff on the plate. So I'm not seeing the problem with portion control or limiting rice intake as an inherent problem. I'll put barely enough rice down to soak up the juice and dump healthy stuff on top like steamed broccoli or grilled shrimps or steamed fish pieces or grilled chicken breast or whatever.

I'm sitting here trying to think of recipes other than blindingly obvious (like fried rice) that must contain heaping piles of rice and can't simply just have more "good stuff" piled on the rice.

Its the same way with unhealthy flavored sauces. I know general tso sauce is nearly pure corn syrup and therefore is bad for me so I use the stuff like people use hot sauce, a taste is enough, a couple drops on each bite and I'm smiling. There's no reason I have to dump the entire bottle of sauce on a couple pieces of grilled chicken.

Given that the "good stuff" tastes better than the rice itself I'm not seeing an appetite or self control problem? Go ahead torture me with extra homemade lemon pepper steamed fish and less of bland tasteless blah rice?

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