DailyDirt: Healthier Rice… From Science
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Billions of people around the world eat rice. So if rice can be made to be more healthy, the benefits could be globally significant. Sure, there are plenty of folks trying to genetically engineer better rice (eg. Golden Rice), but if you don’t like GMOs for whatever reason, you’re not out of luck. There are a few things that might help improve rice without messing around with rice DNA.
- Cooking low calorie rice can be accomplished by adding coconut oil to the water used to cook rice. The coconut oil prevents some of the resistant starches in rice from becoming digestible starches, thereby reducing the calories available to whoever eats it. [url]
- Arsenic content in rice can be reduced by relatively simple rinsing and cooking techniques. A coffee-pot percolation method for cooking rice could eliminate more than half of the arsenic in contaminated rice. [url]
- Studying the microbiome of rice could help reduce the arsenic levels in the grain and plant. Bacteria in the soil has been found to lessen the uptake of arsenic significantly — potentially increasing food production productivity and improving food safety and chronic health conditions for the people who eat this staple daily. [url]
After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
Filed Under: arsenic, bacteria, cooking, food, gmo, golden rice, health, how-to, low calorie, microbiome, rice, starches
Comments on “DailyDirt: Healthier Rice… From Science”
Huh, didn’t know arsenic in rice was an issue.
Or eat brown rice.
Is there really a thing about GMOs being actually unhealthy?
Or is it that some GMOs may be unhealthy because spookyspooky? Or is it just a big fuck-Monsanto campaign?
So far I haven’t found any case for all GMOs being labeled as unhealthy, given we’re happy to eat crush beetle carapace and artificial sweeteners that are allegedly safe but give people headaches, without big warning labels on either of those.
Re: Is there really a thing about GMOs being actually unhealthy?
Or maybe you just oppose GMOs because you don’t believe in the patenting of basic foodstuffs.
If I was worried about food safety, I would have eaten that burrito today from a street vendor with prison tattoos.
There are a lot of reasons, political, economic, and simple consumer preference to not want to purchase GMO foods. And one might be simple contrariness. When an industry is willing to spend billions to make sure you never find out how their products are made, consumers can tell those companies to go to hell.
Because ultimately, the consumer is paying the bill for all the research, all the marketing and all the lobbying around GMOs. And the one who pays gets to decide.
In regards to GMOs anyone that assumes they’re automatically safe is a dumbass. Anyone that assumes they’re automatically dangerous is also a dumbass.
Let’s all agree to hate on Monsanto for their massive IP abuses instead of for GMO silliness.
Re: Re:
Whether safe or not is immaterial, the consumer has a right to know what they are purchasing.
Re: Re: Re:
Goddamn right they do. Because it’s the consumer that is paying the bill. Not the corporation, not the GMO lobbyists, not even the farmers.
The one who pays the bill gets to find out what they’re paying for. And the unwillingness to disclose the provenance of their products is what’s giving the GMO industry a bad name.
One wonders why they don’t just take all the money that they use to lobby congress and fight labeling laws and just use it on marketing their products’ supposed wonderful properties. When you hide something, it makes people suspicious, and make no mistake: consumers are suspicious about GMOs and have a right to be.
Re: Re: Re: Kinda what I gathered before.
From what I’ve heard from the science / nutrition people being a GMO / not being a GMO isn’t too big a deal.
From what I’ve read here, Monsanto is a really big fact dick and should be boycotted if not burned down and turned into a community garden.
From what I’ve heard about labeling, it is very lacking in details. The bug carapace is from natural red food coloring which renders many things non-kosher, which is why it’s a big deal, which is why I know about ground bug carapaces as a food product in the first place.
No one puts powdered beetle carapace on their ingredients list. They put natural food coloring.
And I think putting a GMO warning on our labels is going to be much like putting natural food coloring. Uninformative and not useful.
Re: Re: Re:2 Kinda what I gathered before.
That’s why, instead of ingredients labeling, I would prefer a simple listing of the patents covering the GMOs themselves.
I don’t want to eat patented basic foodstuffs. If every goddamn patent is listed when I buy a phone or a video game, why shouldn’t every goddamn patent be listed when I buy food?
As you say, the food industry tries very hard to hide what’s really in their products (like bug carapaces). If I’m the one paying, I want to know little details like that.
Why reduce calories?
Does the author have any clue why scientists are trying to modify rice? Why the tip on how to reduce the calories in rice? Yes, as a fat American I know that trick, but the scientists are trying to trick MORE calories out of rice, not less.
What a stunning disconnect to go from feeding people to tips on how to get less food value from your food.