Weight loss: The best way to have rice

Rice has gained a bad reputation among weight watchers. And why not? The polished white rice has a high glycemic index, low fiber and nutrients and might snowball all your hard work towards losing weight. But all said and done, this feels like a big sacrifice for many. From lip smacking biryani, rice kheer, vegetable pulao, to rajma or chhole chawal, rice is clearly prepared in a very versatile manner in Indian households. Deep inside we all wish we could eat rice without gaining any weight. But what if we tell you that it is less about the rice but how you eat it that makes all the difference. Yes, you read that right. As per a study published by the American Chemical Society, using coconut oil and a refrigerator can cut down calories in your rice by as high as 60 per cent.

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So clearly there is no need to eliminate rice from your diet if you cook it smartly. It is widely known that rice is rich in calories and there is a smart, tried and tested cooking method that is said to cut down it’s calorie content. So All you have to do is boil rice in a good amount of water with a spoon of coconut oil. Once it cooks for 30-40 minutes, drain it and keep it inside your refrigerator. Take it out after 12 hours and eat as you please.

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Rice or chawal consists of digestible starch along with a type of carb that is known as resistant starch. For the unversed, humans do not have the enzymes to digest the latter (resistant starch) and so when you consume it, it doesn’t get transformed into sugar and gets absorbed by the body for energy; instead it passes through the small intestine and gets metabolised in the colon. The fact is that the more resistant starch a food has, the lower calories will the body absorb. So researchers from the College of Chemical Sciences, Sri Lanka experimented to see if more of the digestible starch from the rice could be converted into indigestible type so it could make the rice less caloric.

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The team tested 38 different kinds of rice and experimented with several recipes to find out a way that would help them cut down its calorie content. The recipe that seemed to work was the one where they used fat and refrigerator.

The glucose unit present in hot boiled rice comprise a loose structure, but when the rice cools down, the molecules tend to rearrange themselves into bonds that are resistant to digestion. Now apart from cutting down the calorie content, cooking rice in this manner also helps feed the good bacteria in your system.

So if you love rice, there is no need to cut it out of your diet. Just cook it smartly…

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