This is an archive article published on February 24, 2022

Adding one spoon of this ingredient while cooking rice will help cut down calories by almost 50 per cent

"We discovered that increasing rice resistant starch (RS) concentrations was a novel way to approach the problem. If the best rice variety is processed, it might reduce the calories by about 50-60 percent," said Sudhair A James, who led the research at the College of Chemical Sciences, Colombo, Western, Sri Lanka.

covid care recipes, easy recipes, covid care, indianexpress.com, indianexpress, Dr Aparna Padmanabhan, ayurveda recipes, easy ayurveda recipes, immunity, how to build immunity, covid care recipes, light recipes,

Here's how resistant starch can help you cut calories in rice (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

4 min readNew DelhiFeb 24, 2022 10:00 AM IST First published on: Feb 24, 2022 at 10:00 AM IST

Cutting down calories features on most weight loss plans, but doing so can get difficult at times. As such, many people tend to avoid carbs, especially rice, in order to achieve their weight loss goals. But what if we tell you that all you need is one easily-available kitchen ingredient to cut down calories in rice while cooking it.

But before that, it is important to understand how rice reacts in the body.

According to experts, rice gets turned into glycogen in the body which makes for a great post-workout recovery fuel for the muscles if one is working out actively. However, when not used, this glycogen soon becomes glucose and gets stored in the body as fat.

Also Read | An easy, healthy recipe for creamy vegan mint dip with sunflower seeds

So, what can be done? According to research, one efficient way to cut down calories in rice is by adding one teaspoon of coconut oil to boiling water and then cooking rice in it for about 25 minutes. Its that simple!’

Here’s how to soak rice for maximum benefits (Source: Pexels)

Drain excess water, if any. Then cool it in the refrigerator for 12 hours. Using coconut oil while cooking and then refrigerating the rice can slash calories by as much as 60 per cent, according to the 2015 research presented in the American Chemical Society.

“We discovered that increasing rice resistant starch (RS) concentrations was a novel way to approach the problem. If the best rice variety is processed, it might reduce the calories by about 50-60 percent,” said Sudhair A James, who led the research at the College of Chemical Sciences, Colombo, Western, Sri Lanka.

Types of starch

According to the research, starch, which is a component of rice, can be both digestible or indigestible. However, unlike digestible types of starch, the resistant starch — which gets created due to overnight soaking — is not broken down in the small intestine where carbohydrates are metabolised into glucose and other simple sugars and absorbed into the bloodstream.

Also Read | When Jennifer Aniston ate the same kind of salad for 10 years while filming ‘FRIENDS’

So, one can keep weight gain at bay if digestible starch gets converted into resistant starch — which could then lower the number of calories.

Tanvi S Chiplunkar, senior dietician at Bhatia Hospital Mumbai added that resistant starch helps keep the microbial (gut) balance healthy, providing a greater proportion of “good” to “bad” gut bacteria.

“When you eat resistant starch, it passes undigested through the small intestine— where nutrients are absorbed — to the colon. There, it fuels the body’s good bacteria,” mentioned Chiplunkar.

Preety Tyagi, lead health coach, nutritionist, and founder of MY22BMI told indianexpress.com that resistant starch “won’t deposit in the body when not used”. “Also, it fills you up with calories that your body doesn’t essentially need to burn, leaving you not so hungry for other foods,” she said.

“This is also the reason why blood sugar (glucose) levels rise more slowly after meals with resistant starch,” said Chiplunkar.

Also Read | 10 delicious low-fat party snack options for your next get-together

“Slower blood sugar level rise also helps the body use insulin better. This may improve type-2 diabetes control and weight management,” Chiplunkar told indianexpress.com.

Dietitian Lavleen Kaur also shared a video elucidating how to avoid bloating after having rajma rice. In it, she mentioned that cooking rice with a tablespoon of coconut can help diabetics control their blood sugar levels. Watch.

After testing 38 varieties of rice in Sri Lanka, the research team zeroed in on a particular way of incorporating coconut oil. James noted that “the cooling is essential because amylose, the soluble part of the starch, leaves the granules during gelatinisation”.

“Cooling for 12 hours will lead to formation of hydrogen bonds between the amylose molecules outside the rice grains which also turns it into a resistant starch.” Reheating the rice for consumption, he notes, does not affect the resistant starch levels.

📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!