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Experience with restrictive starch rice?

Stephen Bond

Well-Known Member
Messages
234
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Non-insulin injectable medication (incretin mimetics)
Dislikes
Bureaucracy. Poor quality. Boredom
I noticed after a bit of research that you can increase the restrictive starch in rice by cooking it and then cooling it before eating hot or cold. A bit more surfing the net showed that rinsing well before cooking to wash out starch, also helped, as did 1 teaspoon of coconut oil or other oil per 1/2 cup of rice in the cooking water.

The thing I haven't found an answer to, is can you cool the rice quickly with cold water and then refrigerate, or do you need to let it cool slowly from hot? Also does the effect increase the longer it is cold?

Any one any experience with this or have any tips on restrictive starch rice?
 

Stephen, the way rice is stored after cooking and before reheating is important. Cooling fast is, I believe, considered to be safer.

Home food fact checker

Knowing how to store, cook and reheat food at home helps improve food safety and reduce food waste. This page has advice on some common household food safety questions like the sniff test and the egg float test.
www.nhs.uk
 
As I replied on the post in the other forum:
It appears that the research published in this area by Dr Robertson was just a pilot study so far.
 
I would have expected that if this research was viable, then in the real world, eating frozen meals from the supermarket freezer would not spike bgl levels. This is not in my experience. It woud have been convenient if this effect was so pronounced. I believe that chinese cuisine also precooks the rice and just reheats as required when you place an order. My local Indian cuisine emporium also does this and my experiment with their rice dishes show it is just as explosive as my home cooked from the packet dishes.

My mother (a T1D) was Indian, and she always washed the rice before cooking to remove the arsenic, and then she always ran the cooked rice under the cold tap and then ran boiling water through it to warm it up again. It was a quick action and she said it helped reduce the starch surge. But she was unable to test her bloods to prove things because this was the time before home testers. But it was common practice in Bombay at the time.
 
Thanks for the reply... Interesting... i got the impression from some of the info online, that the cooling should be only in the fridge, which did not make a lot of sense to me as the quicker it is cooled and sealed up in the fridge the better.... I just wondered f the slower cooling method made a difference.
 
And just as an individual data point, although it seems very clear that everyone is different - I do this all the time with all types of carbs and have found it tremendously successful. I can eat rice, pasta (have done it with spaghetti and ramen), with risotto, with bread.

I cook and cook quickly- with pasta I run under cold water, with rice I put it straight into the fridge (or sometimes I freeze it). Bread I freeze and then use individual slices in the toaster. I’m not sure whether the “speed” of chilling makes a difference- I chill immediately and only use/reheat once stone-cold. It takes a degree of organisation because all such foodstuffs have to be cooked in advance eg the day before or at latest on the morning, for an evening meal. I haven’t experimented with different speeds of cooling because I haven’t needed to - how I do it works perfectly for me and the relief of being able to eat rice, pasta and ramen again is immense - our diet was quite heavily based around those things pre-diabetes.

I *only* do this because I wear a Freestyle Libre (and in fact not just that but have an app that converts it into a CGM that gives readings once a minute automatically, which I then read on my Apple Watch). So I know, confidently, that none of those things affect my BG at all, at any time. I would NOT risk doing it without having that level of data.

Here’s an example chart where I had ramen for breakfast and risotto for lunch (I wouldn’t normally have that much in a day, it was a one off!)

 
Thank you so much for your exceptionally helpful comment! It could well be the best thing I have learned on here so far!!
Pasta, rice, noodles and bread are what I miss most now that I am keeping my glucose levels down, so your experience with those items has very encouraging. Cannot wait to eat sushi again!!!!
As you say, everyone is different, personally I found that rice and bread had a much more marked effect than pasta, however that was not using the cool, rest and reheat method of prep, so I am optimistic now.
Yesterday I tried some rice (75g cooked) which was rinsed in cold water after cooking, and then refrigerated for 3 hours before heating. Sadly that caused a reasonably big jump in my BG after 2 hours 4.8 to 6.4. I am using blood test strips, as so far I found them more accurate and reliable than the Freestyle3.
I tried the same rice again tonight after refrigerating for a further 24 hours, and my BG was 4.7 before dinner and 5.8 after dinner, so much better result from leaving longer in the fridge.
It is interesting to notice the difference between the Freestyle ( i have Freestyle3) and blood test strip results....When i compare the two for example, I got 4.6 on the libre3 and 5.1 on the test strips, which is quite a big difference.
What is the app you use with your Libre? And have you found a low carb alternative for naans? I made one that seemed popular on Youtbe, but it was awful:***:.
 
Have you checked ( in a similar time frame as near diagnosis you might have been more insulin resistant) the same things without the cook cool reheat process to see the difference that process makes to you?
 
That is a fair point because I probably *am* less insulin resistant (having lost quite a lot of weight since diagnosis). Having said that, went out last night for a “no-holds-barred” Thai meal (and I mean no holds barred, I had both rice and noodles, and a chocolate dessert, as well as sweet and sour sauce) and it raised my blood sugars a lot (from 4.4mmol pre meal to 9.5mmol at 90 minutes, and it was three hours, rather than the usual two, before they were back to normal. So I’m definitely not in remission or anything.

I suppose I could try not using the starch resistant cooking method and see what happens, but I’m reluct to dare lol
 
@Stephen Bond - the app I use is called Shuggah

I haven’t tried naan because I don’t really like them but I’d have thought that freezing them and then defrosting a cooking would work in the way that it does with bread. It works with chapati which is what I have.

My Libre tends to read a tad lower than finger pricks too. I usually do a couple of finger pricks on day 2 (because the Libre is always a bit screwy on day 1 even when I apply it 24 hours in advance!). Similar to you it tends between 0.5 and 1mmol lower. I really dislike doing finger pricks though and take the view that it’s the patterns that matter more (for a type 2 which is what I am)
 
We sound pretty similar... (But i am border line pre-diabetes).......I seriously started no sugar, low carb about 2 months ago and lost a massive amount in the first 8 days (7kg), then a further 7kg over the next 7-8 weeks...I went 0 sugar and under 20g of carbs per day. My plan is to continue like that until i lose another 20kg and then raise up my carbs to around 30-40g per day... I really miss fruit!! any comments would be welcome!)

You say that you BG levels return to normal after a big spike within 3 hours... Surely that is great, as you are staying most of your time within the good levels, and 3 hours of high is not a big deal, or is it? Presumably that is not a daily or weekly occurrence?

I stopped eating starches completely, however my doctor said that I should eat 100g of them 3 times per week.... I am doing it once per week, and only pasta, as it was the only thing that did not cause a massive spike. From now on it will be a bit of everything until i finish testing the effects of each. All of this is a giant learning curve for me, but I am getting there! It concerns me that eating fat and cream and cheese is good after all those years keeping them to a minimum.

Lastly, re the naan. ...Naan or Chapatti either would taste great to me, but don't chapattis need to be fried in a lot of oil? What do i know! Anyway, if you have a low carb recipe for them or do you use a normal recipe and freeze them?

I am planning on trying a sushi meal with restricted starch rice, and doing some experimentation at making Low carb biscuits and pork pies!
 
Stephen Bond said:
my doctor said that I should eat 100g of them 3 times per week
Click to expand...
Any reason or evidence given? Other than to see they still spike you I can’t think of a reason to do it and certainly not that frequently given you’ve a long way to go yet to reach your goals. It quite possibly is kicking you out of ketosis regularly or preventing you from reaching it - maybe their goal

Does your dr actually understand keto or are they just scared of it?
 

I fry chapati in ghee. Nothing wrong with that

I don’t these days use a low carb recipe, I just buy them in the shop and freeze them, but there definitely are low carb recipes for pretty much everything! Just google the food you want to make with “keto” in front of it.

The sushi sounds good - hope it works well for you! Luckily I’m not really into sushi, I much prefer sashimi which is much more virtuous from a diabetes point of view

Your plan to gently increase carbs sounds like an excellent one. I’m really not sure what your doctor is basing the idea of eating 100g carbs 3x per week is meant to achieve other than spiking your blood sugars three times per week (which I suppose is better than spiking them constantly but….why spike them at all?)

Our blood sugars do sound quite similar but you’re in a better place than me, as a pre-diabetic. I’m very much a Type 2 diabetic and have been for 10 years. I’m just on good medication (and have lost a lot of weight).

Re fruit I miss it too but find that *for me* raspberries strawberries and blackberries are OK, especially when eaten with double cream. I don’t have loads and loads, maybe 10 raspberries or six strawberries. Grapes are absolute kryptonite, I only use them to treat hypos, and then only 2 or 3!
 
Thanks for your reply HSSS.. I am yet to have a long meaningful chat with my doctor and i hope to have one in the next few days, so will report back. I don't think he really understands Ketosis and is relying on the Ozempic to get my weight off. Who knows? i am sticking to under 20g of carbs per day and OMAD, so my ketosis is staying at a reasonable level (4.4-5) most of the time. Checking with pee strips and blood keto strips occasionally. I fall off the wagon every week or two but not massively, and i figure that balances the carbs up a bit, albeit for a day or so.
 
Sounds like we are both like the same types of food. I am based in France for a while and so getting Asian food, or in fact anything other than French food, is difficult to impossible, so i need to make anything remotely exotic. I tried 2 of the low carb naan recipes but they were awful.. Need to do more experimenting.

haven't tried grapes yet, but i could murder an apple or an orange or a clementine... Getting bored with the berries now.
 
Hi,

just as a point of food safety, PLEASE never put warm food into either the fridge or the freezer in order to cool it quickly. This is a quick way to cause temperature fluctuations in the fridge that may allow bacteria to grow in the food already in the fridge.

Never Put Hot Food In the Fridge, Here's Why

Loved your piping hot bowl of stew and now going towards the fridge to refrigerate the left over? Stop! You may want to wait for it to cool down to room temperature before putting it in the fridge.
food.ndtv.com

If you want to cool rice or pasta immediately after cooking, then please rinse it under the cold tap. You can then refrigerate it immediately. No wait, no introducing heat into the fridge, and no risk of bacteria growing in warmed up fridge food.

Alternately, divide the food into individual portions, let it cool on the counter or draining board (stainless steel cools things down quicker than china or glass), and then refrigerate within 2 hours.
 
Explain to your GP that the Ozempic is actually working by inducing ketosis without needing restricted carbs to trigger it. It is how these meds work. Ozempic needs you to eat carbs to prevent ketoacidosis. Do not let your glucose levels go too low. I have seen reports that levels below 7 mmol/l may be increasing the risk of DKA. DO NOT use a low carb diet or fasting if on these meds.
 
Are you sure? This report https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34895802/ says ozempic isn’t associated with EDKA the way sglt2 and to a somewhat lesser degree other GLP-1 agonists like dulaglutide, exenatide and liraglutide are
 
HSSS said:
Are you sure? This report https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34895802/ says ozempic isn’t associated with EDKA the way sglt2 and to a somewhat lesser degree other GLP-1 agonists like dulaglutide, exenatide and liraglutide are
Click to expand...
This was discussed in another thread recently where a forum member reported DKA event following using this as their only medication. There has been evidence in USA of these events being possibly linked to the GLP-1 meds. It has not been proven as a causual effect but is linked. This family of meds do induce ketosis, and high levels of ketone in the blood, and the effect is made worse if glucose levels fall low. The problem with the med is that its effects remain active for 5 days after the injection, and during this time the normal glucose control feedback mechanisms are jammed full off since the medication is overriding it with constnt GLP-1 demand signal.. This gives a strong insulin demand regardless of dietary considerations. In other words, reducing glucose by reducing carbs may generate glucogen and try to turn off the insulin demand as usual, but it is ignored, So there will remain high insulin and high glucogen, which is ketosis.

A Case of Euglycemic Diabetic Ketoacidosis in a Patient With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and COVID-19

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) can cause significant morbidity and mortality in patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus. DKA causes an approximate annual hospitalization rate of 6.3% and in-hospital case-fatality rate of 0.4%. A subset of DKA cases ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
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