Lankan researchers find changes in cooking method make rice with less calories
Friday, 27 March 2015 00:00
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Denver: Researchers in Sri Lanka have found that making simple changes to the way rice is cooked can lower its calorie content, by converting some of the starch to a non-digestible form.
A new study done by Sudhair A. James and his team at the College of Chemical Sciences in Colombo found that cooking rice with a teaspoon of coconut oil and cooling it for 12 hours after cooking will increase the indigestible form of starch in the rice making it less absorbable to the body. The cooking and subsequent cooling increased resistant starch content of the rice and lowered its calorie count. According to the authors of the study, who presented their findings at the 249th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Denver, the indigestible form of starch called Resistant Starch behaves more like dietary fiber than carbohydrates.
The resistant starch improves the glycemic response, can speed up lipid metabolism and improve immune function James told the attendees at the symposium.
To convert the digestible starch into the indigestible form, the rice needs to be cooked with oil for 20 - 40 minutes and refrigerate at least 12 hours during which the soluble part of the rice gets converted to the insoluble Resistant Starch.
The author says the cooling is essential because amylose, the soluble part of the starch, leaves the granules during gelatinization which happens naturally as rice cools.
“Cooling for 12 hours will lead to formation of hydrogen bonds between the amylose molecules outside the rice grains, which also turn it into a resistant starch.”
According to the researcher, the process is final and reheating the rice will not reverse it.
They have found that the cooking process could cut the calories in rice by “about 50 to 60%”.
The team has experimented with 38 kinds of rice from Sri Lanka, developing a new way of cooking rice that increased the RS content.
More studies will be conducted to test whether other oils also have the same effect. The team also expects to conduct studies with human subjects to learn which varieties of rice might be best suited to the calorie-reduction process.
