The MotherJones article below is somewhat counterintuitive. Reheated pasta & other leftovers may actually be healthier? Frozen fruits are healthier?
Why Leftover Pasta Might Be Healthier Than Fresh
Last week, lovers of rice rejoiced when The Washington Post reported on a simple trick to improve the nutritional value of the food. According to researchers in Sri Lanka, all you have to do is add a fat (they used coconut oil) to the cooking water, cool your rice over night, and voila!—up to to 50 percent of the calories (a cup of rice contains about 200 when cooked conventionally) are gone.
It works by converting the white rice—which made mostly of digestible starch—into one that is indigestible, or “resistant,” meaning that it’s eventually excreted instead of metabolized by our bodies. The researchers found that adding fat and then allowing the rice to cool changed the composition even after the rice was reheated.
With diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity rates rising around the world, this simple tweak to a dietary staple for billions could be a major boon to public health. And it’s just one example of how chemistry can be put to work in the kitchen. Here are five more ways to improve foods’ nutritional content through cooking: