DailyDirt: Healthier Rice... From Science

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Billions of people around the world eat rice. So if rice can be made to be more healthy, the benefits could be globally significant. Sure, there are plenty of folks trying to genetically engineer better rice (eg. Golden Rice), but if you don't like GMOs for whatever reason, you're not out of luck. There are a few things that might help improve rice without messing around with rice DNA.

• Cooking low calorie rice can be accomplished by adding coconut oil to the water used to cook rice. The coconut oil prevents some of the resistant starches in rice from becoming digestible starches, thereby reducing the calories available to whoever eats it. [url]
• Arsenic content in rice can be reduced by relatively simple rinsing and cooking techniques. A coffee-pot percolation method for cooking rice could eliminate more than half of the arsenic in contaminated rice. [url]
• Studying the microbiome of rice could help reduce the arsenic levels in the grain and plant. Bacteria in the soil has been found to lessen the uptake of arsenic significantly -- potentially increasing food production productivity and improving food safety and chronic health conditions for the people who eat this staple daily. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: arsenic, bacteria, cooking, food, gmo, golden rice, health, how-to, low calorie, microbiome, rice, starches

DailyDirt: Are You Going To Eat That?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of food additives that are just fine to eat, and many of them even have scary-sounding chemical names. This doesn't mean that all food additives are bad OR that all food additives are good. While it would be much simpler to make generalizations and label things either good or bad, it's not quite that simple, unless you want to only eat food with a very limited shelf life. Some preservatives reduce food waste and have undetectable effects on the nutritional benefits of the foods they preserve. On the other hand, there are some toxic substances that should be avoided, and they can be all-natural (eg. arsenic) or have some anthropogenic origin.

• Have you ever seen pears individually wrapped in paper? Did you know there are chemicals impregnated into that paper? Do questions make these facts seem scarier than they should? [url]
• The traditional "paddy method" for growing rice in a flooded field can increase the amount of arsenic that the rice ultimately contains. Using less water to grow rice doesn't seem to be a solution because rice seems to absorb other toxic metals in the soil, like cadmium, instead. The amounts of these metals aren't that high, but it might be a good idea to try to remove these elements from farm soils before growing rice in fields that might have elevated levels of heavy metals. [url]
• Urban gardeners who want to grow their own food within city limits might want to test their soil for contaminants like lead, other heavy metals and cleaning solvents. Fortunately, there are a growing number of resources to help urban gardeners to know what might be in their soil and the possible hazards to avoid. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: additives, arsenic, cadmium, chemicals, contaminants, farming, food, gardening, health, heavy metals, pears, rice, toxic, urban gardening

DailyDirt: Growing Food Safely

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Modern farming isn't as low-tech as it used to be. There are invasive species of insects to deal with and growing concerns over using various pesticides to control them. But until we figure out the perfect formula for Soylent Green, the economically-viable options for producing cheap and plentiful food seem a bit limited. Here are just a few examples of problems in the food industry.

• A study of over 200 pregnant women indicates that there is a possible link between eating rice (grown in the US!) and consuming potentially harmful levels of arsenic. Apparently, the arsenic comes from years of pesticide use where rice is grown, and unfortunately, there aren't any legal limits for arsenic in most foods sold in the US. [url]
• Farmers are looking to kill off stink bugs without pesticides using parasitic wasps. But first, researchers need to determine if releasing the wasps won't cause even more problems with farm crops and the environment. [url]
• Strains of Escherichia coli on bean sprouts that caused food poisonings and deaths in Germany may have come from human sources. Japanese researchers suggest a remedy of soaking the veggies in strong vinegar to kill off these nasty bugs. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: arsenic, e coli, farming, food poisoning, insects, pesticides, rice