All things Rice~
First –How to cook rice to reduce arsenic then read on how to make rice healthy by turning it into a resistant starch:
1. Rinse First:
Rinsing removes excess starch, which can make rice gummy. It also helps get rid of any debris or surface contaminants. Rinse until the water runs mostly clear.
2. Water Ratios Matter:
Different types of rice absorb water differently and need different cooking times. If you use the method below where you pre-boil your rice for 5 minutes to remove arsenic, your water and cooking times will both reduce for the final cooking. Here are some approximates:
- White rice: 1 cup rice to 1.5–2 cups water
- Brown rice: 1 cup rice to 2–2.5 cups water
- Black/red/purple rice: 1 cup rice to ~2 cups water (Soaking colorful rice for at least 20–30 minutes before cooking helps shorten cook time and improve texture.)
Rice is a staple food and good carbohydrate for the gut. Popular in health circles is brown rice due to its added fiber, however brown rice has some problems. The bran attached to it contains oils that easily go rancid making it inflammatory. And the problem is most of it is rancid before you even buy it.
The rancidity issue is real. When brown rice is processed, the mechanical actions disrupt the cellular structure of the bran layer, causing lipases from the endosperm to disperse into the rice bran. When exposed to the oil in the bran, hydrolysis reactions take place, leading to rapid rancidity, accompanied by a pungent odor. Research has shown that rice bran requires stabilization techniques within 6 hours to deactivate the lipases in order to achieve effective utilization and storage. That’s a very tight window, and most commercially sold brown rice hasn’t undergone this process, As this information becomes more well known, it may be easier to find brown rice that has been stabilized.
Liu Z, Liu X, Ma Z and Guan T (2023) Phytosterols in rice bran and their health benefits. Front. Nutr. 10:1287405. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1287405
White rice can be made healthier by cooking it ahead of time, refrigerating it for a couple hours or overnight and then you can reheat it when you are ready to eat it. This turns rice (and other grains as well) into a resistant starch which is very awesome gut food!
“Starch retrogradation”: When starchy foods like rice are cooked and then cooled, the amylose and amylopectin chains in the starch realign and recrystallize, increasing the amount of resistant starch — specifically RS Type 3. The cooling essentially restructures the starch at a molecular level into something your digestive enzymes can no longer break down.
Freshly cooked white rice has about 0.64g of resistant starch per 100g. Rice cooled at room temperature for 10 hours roughly doubles that to 1.30g. But rice refrigerated for 24 hours and then reheated jumps to 1.65g, nearly 2.5 times the resistant starch of freshly cooked rice.
Reheating doesn’t decrease the amount of resistant starch, you get all the convenience of warm rice with the gut benefits of the cooling process.
In the large intestine, gut bacteria use resistant starch to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are used by the cells in your colon for energy and contribute to a healthy microbiome, which in turn can help support a healthy immune system.
Benefits of resistant starch include increased feeling of fullness, treatment and prevention of constipation, lowering cholesterol, and lower risk of colon cancer. Resistant starch is also fermented slowly in the gut, so it causes less gas than other fibers.
You get a double benefit: cutting out some of the carbs so blood sugar doesn’t rise as fast, plus resistant starch that works like fiber to feed good gut bacteria.
- What is the difference between basmati rice and jasmine rice? Mostly flavor. Both are long grain white rices (Oryza sativa), basmati has a nuttier flavor while jasmine has a sweet aroma and buttery taste. Basmati comes from India and Pakistan while jasmine rice comes from Thailand.
This applies beyond just rice — potatoes, pasta, and other grains all increase in resistant starch content when cooked, cooled, and reheated. Overnight oats are another great example of this principle in action.
Wild rice is an upgrade.
It’s not actually rice. Wild rice is not directly related to rice species. Brown rice belongs to the Oryza genus, whereas wild rice belongs to the Zizania genus. It’s an aquatic grass seed native to North America, historically a staple food of Native Americans around the Great Lakes region.
Better protein, lower carbs – Wild rice contains 21.34g of carbs per 100g cooked, compared to 25.58g for brown rice, and it has slightly more dietary fiber and more protein. Wild rice also has a lower glycemic index of 45 versus brown rice’s 50.
Wild rice is an antioxidant power house, it has been found to have 30 times greater antioxidant activity than white rice. Its dark color reflects its antioxidant potential — it contains the powerful antioxidant apigenin, which has shown interesting results in anti-cancer research.
The rancidity issue is less of a concern. Wild rice has a naturally lower fat content than brown rice, and processing involves harvesting, heat treating, and stripping the husks— that heat treatment effectively stabilizes it in a way that most commercial brown rice needs but doesn’t get.
A few caveats: Like brown rice, wild rice can contain arsenic, but soaking wild rice overnight (up to 24 hours) before cooking or using the method explained below can help remove some heavy metals. Also, very rarely, wild rice can host ergot toxin, visible as pink or purplish spots on the grains, these should be removed before cooking.
Overall, wild rice is a superior option — better nutrient profile, lower carbs, far higher antioxidants, and none of the rancid bran oil problem that plagues brown rice. The main downside is cost, as it’s significantly more expensive.
Purple Rice 🙂 -My fav and the most nutritionally dense of all the rice options.
Purple rice is recognized as a source of natural anthocyanin compounds. Anthocyanin is one of the major antioxidant compounds that protect against reactive oxygen species (ROS) that cause cellular damage in plants and animals, including humans. This is the same pigment that makes blueberries and eggplants so healthy — purple rice is loaded with it.
Purple rice contains up to 10 times more anthocyanins and other beneficial plant compounds than brown rice, making it the most nutritionally dense option among rice varieties.
The anthocyanins reduce starch digestibility by forming complexes with starch, thereby inhibiting key digestive enzymes. So beyond the cook-cool-reheat resistant starch trick, purple rice is already slowing down digestion and blunting blood sugar spikes just by virtue of its anthocyanin content. That’s a double gut benefit.
Anthocyanins have been demonstrated to reduce the risks of serious diseases such as cancer and obesity, and the compounds have antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and anti-skin aging effects. And also support brain health, these powerful antioxidants cross the blood-brain barrier, where they may help protect brain cells from oxidative stress and inflammation, potentially supporting memory function and reducing the risk of age-related cognitive decline.
The bran oil rancidity issue: Purple rice, like brown rice, has its bran intact — so the rancidity concern discussed earlier technically applies. However, the extraordinarily high antioxidant content of the bran itself likely offers some protection against oxidation that plain brown rice doesn’t have. It’s still worth buying it fresh and storing it properly.
And then there is red rice: Red rice is a long, grainy variety that gets its reddish tinge from anthocyanins as well. It’s botanically referred to as Oryza longistaminata or Oryza punctata, and is known in Ayurvedic medicine as Rakthashali, praised for its exceptional health properties. Popular varieties include Himalayan red rice, Thai red cargo rice, and Kerala’s Matta rice.
Red rice owes its vibrant hue to anthocyanins, and powerful antioxidants not present in brown rice, with roughly 10 times the antioxidant activity of brown rice. So like purple rice, it gets a massive antioxidant boost from its pigmentation that plain brown rice simply doesn’t have.
It is also blood sugar friendly. The glycemic index of red rice is estimated at around 55, making it an ideal choice for diabetics — it not only keeps blood sugar levels in check but also keeps you satiated for longer. Applying the cook-cool-reheat resistant starch trick would push that benefit even further.
Red rice has another hidden benefit, it contains monacolin K, a compound that naturally helps lower LDL cholesterol (what some call the “bad” –but its not … its only bad if its oxidized). This is the same compound found in red yeast rice supplements, making it useful for cardiovascular health in some opinions.
Red rice is mineral rich, significant is selenium, which supports immune function and fighting off infection, and is also high in manganese, which plays a role in bone formation, blood clotting, and hormone production.
How it compares to purple rice: The two are quite similar — both are pigmented whole grain rices loaded with anthocyanins and dramatically more antioxidants than brown rice. Purple rice edges ahead slightly in anthocyanin concentration, but red rice has the unique advantage of monacolin K for cholesterol management. Both sidestep the worst of the brown rice rancidity problem due to their high antioxidant content in the bran itself.
So to summarize the ranking from a pure nutrition standpoint: purple rice ≈ red rice > wild rice > white rice (cook-cool-reheated) > brown rice — with brown rice being undercut by the rancidity issue despite its healthy reputation.
If you’re going to pick one rice and apply the cook-cool-reheat method, purple rice (also sold as black rice or “forbidden rice”) stacks benefits in a way none of the others quite match: resistant starch + anthocyanin-slowed digestion + massive antioxidant load. Wild rice is still an excellent runner-up.
Other “grains” I have been experimenting with instead of my beloved rice; Buckwheat groats and Amaranth.
Neither buckwheat nor amaranth are grains. Buckwheat groats are the hulled seeds of the buckwheat plant — a pseudocereal that’s not related to wheat at all, and is naturally gluten-free. Similarly, amaranth is classified as a pseudocereal — not technically a cereal grain like wheat or oats, it shares a comparable set of nutrients and is used in similar ways. Both have been cultivated for thousands of years as staple foods.
Buckwheat Groats
Buckwheat groats are also a source of prebiotics, acting as food for the healthy gut bacteria that live in the digestive tract, which research shows may play a role in immune function, mental health, allergies, and weight management.
Buckwheat groats score a 45 on the glycemic index –a favorable number due to their high protein and fiber content, meaning they help keep you full longer and won’t cause blood sugar spikes.
What makes buckwheat particularly special are its unique antioxidants. Buckwheat is rich in rutin, which may help manage the risk of heart disease by preventing the formation of blood clots and decreasing inflammation and blood pressure. Rutin is essentially absent from all the rice varieties discussed.
And here’s something remarkable: buckwheat is a complete vegetarian protein, meaning it contains all nine of the essential amino acids. That is a big plus in my book!
Amaranth
Amaranth takes the protein story even further. Amaranth seeds contain 13–15% protein per serving, with all nine essential amino acids including lysine, which is frequently absent from other cereals. Studies show that in the plant kingdom, amaranth proteins are among the most similar to animal proteins.
On fiber, amaranth delivers roughly 6–7 grams of fiber per 100 grams, considerably more than any rice variety. And amaranth delivers 7.6mg iron (42% daily value), 248mg magnesium (62% daily value), and 557mg phosphorus (79% daily value) per 100g, outperforming wheat and rice in most micronutrients.
For gut health specifically, amaranth’s soluble fiber dissolves into a gel-like mass that traps fats, sugars, bacteria and toxins, and may help prevent leaky gut syndrome.
Both buckwheat and amaranth sit above rice on almost every nutritional measure — more protein, more fiber, lower or comparable glycemic index, unique antioxidants, and complete amino acid profiles. The cook-cool-reheat resistant starch trick also applies to both of them, so you can stack that benefit on top of everything else.
Here is a hierarchy across everything discussed: amaranth ≈ buckwheat groats > purple rice ≈ red rice > wild rice > white rice (cook-cool-reheated) > brown rice — with buckwheat and amaranth earning their place at the top by combining the gut-feeding prebiotic fiber with complete plant protein and unique antioxidants that rice simply doesn’t offer.
These info graphics come from Deanna Minnich, PhD DeannaMinnich.com. Double click on image to see it better.
