ADMITTEDLY BIZARRE QUESTION: What if cooling your rice, potatoes, and pasta before eating them could change the way your body digests them, potentially improving their effects on blood sugar, gut health, and even weight loss? While the idea of refrigerating your dinner before eating it sounds like another ridiculous nutrition trend, this one (gasp!) actually has some legitimate research behind it. It all comes down to resistant starch, a type of carbohydrate that escapes digestion in the small intestine and has shown to have some interesting effects on gut health, blood sugar, and more.
MOST STARCHES (AKA complex carbohydrates) are broken down into glucose in the small intestine. That glucose is then absorbed into the cells and used for energy. Resistant starch, as its name suggests, resists that process, passing through the small intestine intact.
Once in the colon, it’s fermented by good gut bacteria. Although technically a starch, resistant starch functions similarly to dietary fiber in that its fermentation confers health benefits to the host. There are five types of resistant starch; two are found in food, the remaining three are created through cooking and cooling or chemical modification.
WHEN YOU COOL or freeze starchy foods like bread and cooked pasta, rice, and potatoes, the temperature drop causes some of the starch molecules in these foods to rearrange themselves in a process called retrogradation. This makes them more difficult for digestive enzymes to break down. The amount of resistant starch formed depends on the food, its starch composition, how it’s cooked, and how long it’s cooled.
Reheating a starchy food does not destroy the resistant starch that has formed, so yes, you can toast your frozen bread and still theoretically reap the benefits. SOME OF THE strongest evidence for resistant starch’s health benefits comes from its role as a prebiotic, meaning that it serves as food for beneficial gut bacteria. When these gut bacteria ferment resistant starch in the colon, they produce short-chain fatty acids including butyrate, acetate, and propionate.
These are important for maintaining the integrity of the gut barrier, modulating inflammation, and supporting intestinal health. Resistant starch has also shown some potential with blood sugar regulation. Because resistant starch isn’t readily turned into glucose, replacing some digestible starch with resistant starch can reduce the amount of glucose entering the bloodstream after a meal.
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