Scientists invent a genius cooking hack to cut calories in rice by over half

Everyone loves rice.

You can't eat a good curry or a chilli con carne without it. But unless you're one of those lucky ectopmorphs who can fill up on rice at every meal without blowing up like a balloon, then it's best to eat it sparingly. However US scientists have come up with a cooking hack that could eliminate more than 50 per cent of the calories from your rice, according to Delish. The research found that this new way of cooking it basically renders some of the starch in the rice indigestible by the human body. All you have to do is add a spoonful of coconut oil to your rice water and then leave it to simmer for between 20 to 40 minutes (we told you coconut oil was incredible stuff). Then you have to refrigerate the rice for 12 hours and it cuts the number of calories you body takes in by up to 60 per cent, according to the research presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Why does it work? Well, rice is made up of two kinds of starch - one that our body can easily digest and another that is resistant, as we don't have the correct enzymes to do so. The easily digested starch spikes our blood sugar which, if we're not burning the energy, is quickly stored in fat cells. So the trick scientists have created basically shifts the balance in favour of resistant starches, to stop more being broken down and sending our blood sugar up. This is where the miracle stuff coconut oil comes in. Boiling a teaspoon of it along with the rice makes the starch granules resistant to the digestive enzymes and refrigerating the rice helps this process along. The best part is that when you reheat it, it won't alter the calorie-cutting effect of the coconut oil.