Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

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

#51

Post by 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.

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

#52

Post by oldmanjay »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Did you have a point or were you just posting to feel superior to strawman fat people?

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

#53

Post by oldmanjay »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Did you have a point or were you just posting to feel superior to strawman fat people?

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

#54

Post by crucialfelix »

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…

the Pakistani basmati I have instructs to boil the water and then drop the washed rice in. I think it makes it fluffier. really good basmati is light like a feather.

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

#55

Post by DanBC »

pbreit wrote: post #29
mekoka wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Rice was the most common form of food poisoning in the UK for a while. Cooling the rice takes it through bacteria reproduction temperature; as does reheating the rice. The bacteria don't cause the poisoning though, so killing them doesn't help. The bacteria release a toxin and that isn't destroyed by heating.

So, if people are going to try this they need to cool the rice down as quickly as possible; keep it cold; and then properly reheat it.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-po...

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

#56

Post by Vraxx »

oswego wrote: post #49

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.

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

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

#57

Post by semi-extrinsic »

oldmanjay wrote: post #52
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you have a point or were you just posting to feel superior to strawman fat people?

I was replying to parent who was basically saying that a process does not work if people are unwilling to try the process. This statement is false. If I am unwilling to replace the broken on exhaust on my car, it does not mean that it's impossible for me to fix my car.

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

#58

Post by npsimons »

buckbova wrote: post #46
npsimons wrote: post #15

Or, you could, I don't know, just not each as much . . .

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.

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.

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

#59

Post by npsimons »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #57
oldmanjay wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have a point or were you just posting to feel superior to strawman fat people?

I was replying to parent who was basically saying that a process does not work if people are unwilling to try the process. This statement is false. If I am unwilling to replace the broken on exhaust on my car, it does not mean that it's impossible for me to fix my car.

Exactly. You can't beat the second law of thermodynamics. I'm really disappointed in the level of fatlogic in the comments here, and the downvotes for pointing out simple facts.

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN