Arsenic boiling water destroys rice
Scientists at the University of Sheffield in the UK say that putting rice in boiling water for five minutes kills the arsenic in it.
According to the Daily Mail, British researchers have recently proposed the best way to filter natural arsenic toxin from rice without losing rice nutrients and minerals.
Rice naturally contains large amounts of arsenic. Arsenic is a deadly toxin that can kill humans, and experts have recently suggested the best way to remove it from rice during cooking.
Boiling water before pouring it into the rice and then draining the water after five minutes will further deplete the arsenic. Then people have to finish cooking the rice by adding water, lowering the heat and putting the lid on the pot. Researchers at the University of Sheffield recently discovered that short boiling is the most effective way to reduce the level of arsenic in rice.
Parboiling is a type of cooking method in which the food is partially and briefly in contact with boiling water. This method is mostly done for whole grain rice (husked), so that with the necessary pressure and steam, the rice bran is separated from the rice grain so that its food enters the rice grain from the bran.
The findings, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, show that the method removes more than 50 percent of the natural arsenic in brown rice. In white rice, this method eliminates up to 74% of arsenic.
According to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the maximum safe daily intake of arsenic is eight micrograms per kilogram of body weight. The average weight of a man in the UK is 83.6 kg and their permissible daily intake is 668 micrograms or 0.6 mg.
The United Kingdom follows the European Commission’s current rules on the use of arsenic. Therefore, the law of arsenic content in white rice should not exceed 0.20 mg / kg and 0.25 mg / kg in brown rice.
Therefore, only those who consume more than three kilograms of white rice and 2.4 kilograms (5.3 pounds) of brown rice per day violate this threshold, which can also lead to lung, skin and bladder cancers. However, this method preserves all the nutrients in the crop while removing the harmful toxins from the rice.
Our newly developed method is easy and anyone can use it, said Dr. Manoj Menon, one of the study’s authors. We do not know the amount of arsenic in each package of rice we buy.
As our data show, brown rice is nutritionally superior to white rice but contains more arsenic than white rice. We highly recommend this method when preparing rice for infants and children because this vulnerable group is more at risk for arsenic.
This toxic chemical accumulates naturally in the product and has been linked to diet-related cancers and liver disease. In serious cases, it can be fatal. Arsenic is classified as a carcinogen in Group 1 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and enters plants because it is soluble in water. Rice, which is often grown in paddy fields, absorbs 10 times more arsenic than other cereals.