A (maybe rather silly) question about white rice page 2

[Happy Paleo Girl]

Take this advice lightly, but I think rice is a terrible starch source. If it was so great, why does it need to be 'enriched'? And what does that even mean? Even the author of The Perfect Health Diet says to rinse off white rice to get the enriching agents off it. White rice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says: "The milling and polishing processes both remove important nutrients. A diet based on unenriched white rice leaves people vulnerable to the neurological disease beriberi, due to a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1). White rice is often enriched with some of the nutrients stripped from it during its processing. Enrichment of white rice with B1, B3, and iron is required by law in the United States, although these nutrients are only a small portion of what has been removed."

For my starch needs there is only one choice, regular, white potatoes. Sweet potatoes are OK to eat, but eat them like they were carrots--not as a daily starch source.

White potatoes have a property that makes them ideal for people with gut problems: Resistant Starch. Resistant Starch RS creates large colonies of beneficial bacteria in the large intestine which push out the bad. I have seen this first-hand in the last 4 months since I started eating potatoes after a 2 year LC hiatus.
Up until recently, eating things like sauerkraut, cabbage, peppers, fruit, would lead to prolonged 'gassy-ness', of the worst kind. Now, I eat all those listed items with nary a poot.

Best way to maximize the RS is eat potatoes that have been boiled and cooled to refrigerator temp. Eaten cold is best (like potato salad) but reheated to under 150 deg OK, too. Other preparations of potato have a certain degree of RS, but not like cooked and cooled. The highest fraction, though, is found in raw potato. Eat sparingly at first til you can handle it, but a slice or two of raw potato when preparing them for cooking is tasty and healthy. The pros and cons of munching on raw potatoes | UTSanDiego.com

Thanks, otzi! Really great information here. From what I've read about white rice, it's precisely the stripping of nutrients that makes it a safer choice than brown rice, because this process also removes the anti nutrients. I have been rinsing it prior to cooking. I'm not concerned about the nutrient content. It's specifically the neutrality of white rice that I'm interested in. Not only has it not irritated my insides in any noticeable way, but I've felt more satiated and content after eating it, and have even slept better.

But that's very interesting about the resistant starch in potatoes. I do recall reading somewhere awhile back about it being more available once the potatoes have been cooled. I am thoroughly intrigued now. Especially after recently coming across your thread about eating potatoes almost exclusively for a week in order to drop weight! I was wondering what the mechanism is behind why that works?

I'll definitely be doing some more experimenting with potatoes now, especially with boiling them and eating them cooled.

[Happy Paleo Girl]

I have celiac disease so my gut's been messed up pretty nicely, but I find that white rice is just fine for me. Things like rice and potatoes have been some of the easiest things for me to digest for pretty much my whole life (along with eggs and bananas). Brown rice can be more irritating, but without the bran, it seems to be benign in my case. My body lets me know loud and clear when I eat something that it doesn't like, but I don't react to white rice at all. Some people find potatoes far more irritating than rice--it's really an n=1 thing to see if you can tolerate it or not.

I also have no issues with eggs and bananas. I hadn't had bananas (or hardly any other fruit for that matter), in close to 6 months, because I suspected candida as the cause for the bloating. But all of the sugar avoidance and low carb eating hasn't done anything to improve it, so I'm no longer worrying about a little fructose from a banana here and there.

I'd suggest adding your starches in stages, maybe. If you have a sensitive system, try adding just rice or just white potatoes (peeled) because they are a bit more likely to cause issues than squashes or sweet potatoes, and you want to be able to distinguish if it's the potatoes or the rice if you have any issues arising. Also, I would hold off on adding the quinoa until you try out the other ones to see how you do--the saponins are a potential irritant and some people who are fine with rice don't do well with quinoa.

Adding in one starch at a time is a good idea. So far I know I've been ok with the white rice, so potatoes with dinner tonight will be the next test. I agree w/you on holding off on the quinoa. I have a pretty strong instinctive feeling that it wouldn't agree with me.

And yeah, don't buy the parboiled junk. I usually buy Indian basmati for my regular rice, and then sometimes other specialty types for specific recipes (sticky rice, etc.). I love the scent of basmati cooking. Brown rice will be labelled as such and is pretty distinctive looking, so don't worry about puzzling out whether the ivory coloured rice is white enough.

I love basmati rice as well. Is it just as innocuous as white rice?

[Happy Paleo Girl]

It sounds like the excessive veggies are your problem not the carb level. I agree with Otzi that rice is benign as far as irritation goes but pretty useless for nutrition. If you want some more starch without the angry insides I would suggest peeling your spuds.

The veggies weren't even that excessive. But I do agree that they were definitely causing a problem. But if I don't add in some starch, I have the issue of what to eat besides just protein and fat. Not that I mind a plate of just bacon and eggs, but I would basically be confined to an almost all meat diet.
Good suggestion on peeling the potatoes. I'll have to give them a try both ways and see how I do.

[Owly]

Basmati is simply one variety of rice, just like short-grain rice and so on. White rice simply refers to any rice that has the bran removed. You can get white or brown basmati--obviously you don't want the brown.

[paleo-bunny]

I'm good with white rice and white potatoes. White rice is lower in micronuntrient value than white potatoes but higher in micronutrients than most fats, calorie for calorie.

I recommend risotto for a healthy way to eat white rice.

Fry any combo of onions/leeks/shallots in butter and olive oil, add arborio or carnaroli rice and stir for a few minutes (optionally add a large glass of white wine and let the bulk of the alcohol boil off). Then add some stock and simmer for about 25 minutes, stirring well and topping up with stock as necessary.

When the rice is al dente, add chopped fresh garlic, lemon juice, fresh herbs (cilantro or flat-leaf parsley) and cooked veggies (e.g asparagus, zucchini, bell peppers), along with some protein e.g. a combo of pancetta, shrimps, smoked salmon, grated pecorino cheese or other cheese that you like, and stir on the heat for a couple of minutes. Take off the heat and leave to stand for a few mins before serving with a dressed green salad.

The leftovers taste even better the next day.

It's a great dish to experiment with.

[Chaohinon]

If it was so great, why does it need to be 'enriched'?

Rice doesn't need to be enriched, per se, but it's nice for impoverished people who don't have access to food variety. It helps them not die. Any other mono diet would yield the same problems, but 99.9% of people reading this forum will never have to worry about these things.

Some south american and african populations have run into similar problems when forced to depend entirely on cassava, but it doesn't logically follow that there's something inherently wrong with tapioca flour.

And while I have a ton of respect for the Jaminets, but warning people to rinse the enriching agents off of their rice, and then suggesting they take multivitamins seems like a load of hocus pocus.

[Paleobird]

The veggies weren't even that excessive. But I do agree that they were definitely causing a problem. But if I don't add in some starch, I have the issue of what to eat besides just protein and fat. Not that I mind a plate of just bacon and eggs, but I would basically be confined to an almost all meat diet.
Good suggestion on peeling the potatoes. I'll have to give them a try both ways and see how I do.

I have been moving toward a more meat centric diet lately. I still eat some veggies but more as flavorings/decorations around the edges of the meat like a mushroom sauce on a steak or salsa in my meatloaf.
If you are doing "nose to tail" eating,(offal, bone marrow.broth, etc.), the veggies aren't really necessary. I find my digestive system is saying thank you to me for backing off on the nightly BAS.

[zizou]

Take this advice lightly, but I think rice is a terrible starch source. If it was so great, why does it need to be 'enriched'? And what does that even mean? Even the author of The Perfect Health Diet says to rinse off white rice to get the enriching agents off it. White rice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says: "The milling and polishing processes both remove important nutrients. A diet based on unenriched white rice leaves people vulnerable to the neurological disease beriberi, due to a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1). White rice is often enriched with some of the nutrients stripped from it during its processing. Enrichment of white rice with B1, B3, and iron is required by law in the United States, although these nutrients are only a small portion of what has been removed."

For my starch needs there is only one choice, regular, white potatoes. Sweet potatoes are OK to eat, but eat them like they were carrots--not as a daily starch source.

White potatoes have a property that makes them ideal for people with gut problems: Resistant Starch. Resistant Starch RS creates large colonies of beneficial bacteria in the large intestine which push out the bad. I have seen this first-hand in the last 4 months since I started eating potatoes after a 2 year LC hiatus.
Up until recently, eating things like sauerkraut, cabbage, peppers, fruit, would lead to prolonged 'gassy-ness', of the worst kind. Now, I eat all those listed items with nary a poot.

Best way to maximize the RS is eat potatoes that have been boiled and cooled to refrigerator temp. Eaten cold is best (like potato salad) but reheated to under 150 deg OK, too. Other preparations of potato have a certain degree of RS, but not like cooked and cooled. The highest fraction, though, is found in raw potato. Eat sparingly at first til you can handle it, but a slice or two of raw potato when preparing them for cooking is tasty and healthy. The pros and cons of munching on raw potatoes | UTSanDiego.com

The first time I did VLC (about 6 months ago), I lost some weight and felt great. Now I think my gut is more messed up, and it seems that even the small amounts of irritating veggies that I'd been having were causing some serious inflammation, which increased my bloating, which has kept my weight up.



I read somewhere that the smaller red potatoes are the way to go, so that's what I picked up. And those little purple potatoes are amazing.
I had the same experience w/squash - I'm ok with spaghetti squash, but butternut definitely causes some issues. I'm so glad you mentioned this! I'll keep this in mind as I experiment more with starches.

Seems like fructose malabsorption could be at play here. You specifically note butternut causes you problems, its the only squash which is recommened to be limited to half a cup serving on a fructose malabsorption diet. Orange sweet potatoes likewise.

[BestBetter]

So what the heck am I looking for when buying white rice?

There are a few options:

1) Jasmine rice
2) Basmati rice (Just make sure you don't buy something with 'brown' in the title, like 'Basmati Brown', which I've seen in some stores.)
3) Arborio and 4)Carnaroli when making risotto dishes, but you could use them for other types of recipes.
5) Sushi rice

*There might be others, but these are the ones I know of and use.