Submitted 2 months ago by mox@lemmy.sdf.org to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720368728
Why you should know:
Arsenic is a carcinogen and has various other negative health effects; enough to warrant exposure limits in various jurisdictions. A five minute boil-and-discard step before cooking is a simple way to reduce your exposure, especially if you eat a lot of rice.
Oh boy, someone better go back and tell all of Asia for the last 10,000 years
This is a growing problem due to climate change (higher temperatures seem to increase arsenic uptake) and pollutants, so this doesn’t make any sense.
The only reason I started eating more rice in the last decade or so, was one click cooking. If you want me to use a process more complex than “dump equal rice and water in rice maker then click start”, I’m afraid the alternative is potatoes
Im with you.
Sorry, everything these days causes cancer. Let me have a quick easy dinner so this life is worth it.
Yeah, I’m getting a prop 65 warning tattooed on my ass one of these days. That way I can just enjoy life knowing I’ve been told.
Let’s do the math. Rice contains about 0.4 mg/kg As by weight. The “bad” rice in Louisiana or whatever contains about 75% more - about 0.7 mg/kg. Let’s round up to 1 mg/kg to make the math easy. Chronic exposure limits for a 50 kg adult are about 5 mg/day (on the low end).
So you’d have to choke down a full 10 lb bag of rice every day (about 110 cups of cooked rice) to start to tip the scales. Other sources of arsenic, like groundwater, are likely far more significant.
Comment stolen from reddit
Challenge accepted.
Soooo it’s safe to eat without throwing the eater out
Well, if you were previously throwing anyone who ate the rice in the garbage, then yes, not doing that would be safe.
^sorry,^ ^I^ ^couldn’t ^ ^resist.^ ^yes,^ ^it’s^ ^safe^ ^to^ ^eat^ ^rice^ ^without^ ^throwing^ ^out^ ^the^ ^first^ ^batch^ ^of^ ^water.^
How much arsenic water would I need to distill down to get a useful amount of arsenic?
Asking, for science
Of course.
The real question. Apple seeds also have arsenic, but you would have to eat something like 12 cups of apple seeds to have any health issues.
It’s the dose that makes the poison.
Aren’t you better off with plum or peach seeds?
How much arsenic do you define as useful? I had a similar thought and could probably figure it out, but I really don’t want to dig my old chem and bio texts out of my garage.
You can actually buy parboiled rice which have been dried. It’s very close in price to white rice and not as sticky as regular rice.
It takes just as long to cook, and has the texture of parboiled rice.
Helpful advice? Who ARE you?
It takes 40 mins to fully cook brown rice plus the 5-8 mins it takes for it to boil. This will add 15-20 mins more to overall cooking. As someone who eats rice almost everyday, I’ll probably want to start doing this, but man that’s a lot more time and water wasted 😞
This will add 15-20 mins more to overall cooking.
You could make that 5-6 minutes extra by heating your cooking water while parboiling the rice, so the cooking water is ready to go when the parboil is done. In a kettle or second pan, for example.
You could make it 0-1 minutes by also reducing the cooking time by 5 minutes, to account for the 5 minutes in the parboil step.
I’m asian and grew up in Asia cooking rice without a rice cooker. This is how we do it:
If I was to boil the rice for 5 mins and throw the water out, that means I need to boil water first (5-8 mins), throw in the rice and wait 5 minutes, then throw out the water. Only then will I do the above steps. The fresh water needs to boil again (5-8 mins) before I simmer for 40 mins.
And bananas are radioactive. Best leave them a few halflives before scraping the mouldy gunky remains from your fruit bowl.
Ysk your body can naturally get rid of arsenic so this is pointless.
Give me the arsenic because there is no way I’m overcooking my rice to remove it
This is suggesting the rice be overcooked, just cooked using a different process.
Do you “discard” the water by… just letting it into the sink? How long before aresnic is everywhere?
Arsenic is a naturally occurring element.
Does it come with old lace?
Scientists of discovered that saliva causes stomach cancer but only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.
I’ve been parcooking rice like this for about 3 years now. It’s very little effort and doesn’t change the rice enough to matter.
is that why that one british lady Uncle Roger was roasting drained her rice?
wallybeavis@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The microplastics in my body laugh at arsenic’s petty attempt on my life!
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