Low-Carb… Carbs? How to Hack Your Rice With Coconut Oil
(Photo: Lali Masriera)
White rice is a great source of carbohydrate – in moderation and at the right time of day. And we all know that coconut oil provides useful energy on the Bulletproof Diet.
But what about the two together? New research on what happens when you cook rice with coconut oil might blow your mind!
Cyclical fat burning (ketosis) with occasional carbs is an important part of the Bulletproof Diet, and white rice is one of the most Bulletproof carbs around.
Turning brown rice into white rice removes phytate – an anti-nutrient that stops us from absorbing minerals – and leaves both a clean source of starch and an excellent base for several easy meals. It also reduces arsenic – brown rice was found to have up to 80 times more arsenic than white rice. White rice is the perfect vehicle for all kinds of tasty things: bacon, grass-fed butter, veggies…the list goes on.
With so many delicious additions you might find it easy to overindulge on rice, and too much rice too often is no good. Your body converts white rice to glucose quickly, which is why too much of it, like too much of any carbohydrate, can trigger insulin resistance, fatigue, weight gain, and a host of other issues.
But what if you could hack your white rice to avoid this problem? What if you could decrease its glycemic index, increase its health benefits, and make it more Bulletproof, all with a simple change to the way you cook it?
Well, some new observations imply that you can, and it’s very easy to do. All it takes is a little coconut oil.
Why You Should Upgrade Your Rice With Coconut Oil
While it’s not a very efficient way to get true biological MCTs, coconut oil serves an important role in your diet. It may not boost your brain and metabolism like Brain Octane Oil, but it’s an excellent source of cheap and abundant lauric acid, and it’s a beneficial addition to any diet.
According to a group of researchers who presented at The American Chemical Society in spring 2015, coconut oil may also be the key to upgrading your rice. Though the research on this is still preliminary, the results look promising, and doing it now doesn’t appear to have any risk.
The researchers steamed rice normally, making just two modest changes: they added coconut oil before cooking the rice, and afterward they cooled the rice down in a fridge. Researchers already knew that cooked-and cooled or parboiled rice were higher in resistant starch than freshly-steamed rice.
The results were profound, though not for the reason the researchers report. The team focuses on the fact that the calories in the rice decreased by 10-12%, and they’re optimistic that with more research, they can raise that number to 60%. However, if you’ve been reading about the Bulletproof Diet you know that calories don’t matter compared to hormones, and that when it comes to your health, quality trumps quantity.
But it’s nice to be able to eat a lot more rice without overloading on carbs!
So you don’t need to pay a lot of attention to the decreased calories themselves – but you DO want to care about the reason behind the decrease in calories.
When you cook coconut oil and rice together, the oil binds to the digestible starch in the rice – that’s the starch that converts to glucose. Once bound with the oil, the digestible starch begins to crystallize, creating another form of starch: the resistant variety. The researchers found that cooling the rice after cooking it promoted crystallization, leading to a shocking 10 to 15-fold increase in resistant starch compared to normally prepared white rice.
They haven’t published their study yet, but the preliminary research shows promise.
Why Resistant Starch Matters
Resistant starch can be helpful for some people, although loading up on potato starch and the like isn’t a great strategy for many of us. (Read up on resistant starch here.) In short: taken as a supplement, it can improve insulin sensitivity, enhance sleep quality, increase energy levels, and promote mental clarity.
When it comes resistant starch in rice, there is another benefit. Our bodies convert digestible starch into glucose, which raises blood sugar levels. Humans don’t digest resistant starch, on the other hand, so it doesn’t raise blood glucose at all. In fact, for some people, certain types of resistant starch can lower glucose and insulin levels after meals. For others, it causes digestive distress.
The benefit of cooking rice with coconut oil, therefore, is twofold:
The rice produces a smaller spike in blood sugar because you get more resistant starch to take the place of digestible starch.
Moreover, the inherent qualities of the resistant starch decrease this smaller spike even further.
The result is lower-carb rice.
It’s a strange and paradoxical concept, but it’s appealing. With a significantly lower glycemic index, rice no longer has to be limited to an occasional treat. If you love rice as your carbohydrate source, rejoice! Delicious cooled rice dishes like sushi are already a good choice, and you can step that up a lot more if you cook the rice yourself (and if you’ve never made your own sushi, try it; it’s a blast).
Enjoy this quick dessert recipe. It’s appropriate for days when you are going to dip out of ketosis, but it won’t spike your blood sugar the way junk food or sugar would. If you eat a little in the evening, you may experience an amazing boost in sleep quality. Thanks for reading, and stay Bulletproof!
RECIPE: Low Carb Rice with Honey
Yields 4-6 servings
Ingredients:
1 cup organic sushi rice
1 ? cups water
Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
2 tbsp. grass-fed butter
1 tsp. raw honey
3 tbsp. coconut oil
Directions:
Bring water to a boil.
Rinse rice well in cold water and drain.
Add rice and coconut oil, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 20 minutes.
Remove rice from heat and immediately transfer it to the fridge. Let rice cool in the fridge for 1 hour, or longer. You can portion out the rice before putting it in the fridge so that it cools more quickly. (think chunks shaped like your thumb, like you’d use for nigiri sushi)
When rice is cool, set oven to warm.
Remove rice from fridge and put in oven until warm.
Drizzle butter, raw honey, and salt.
Enjoy.
Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof and creator of Bulletproof Coffee, is a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who spent 15 years and $300,000 to hack his own biology, lose 100 pounds, upgrade his IQ, and lower his biological age. You can find more about biohacking, the art of changing your environment and your biology so you perform better, on the bulletproofexec.com blog.