If you're struggling to lose weight, could chilling your carbs help?

"Most of the carbohydrates in these foods - as well as most of the calories - come from starch, of which there are two types: hard-to-digest amylose and easily digested amylopectin. The latter is processed quickly and spikes blood sugar. The former is processed slowly and moderates blood sugar."

"Chilling those cooked foods triggers "retrogradation," a process that converts easily digested starch back into resistant starch, making it harder to digest even if the food is then reheated."

"Multiple studies since 2015 have found that people who ate rice that was cooked and then cooled had sometimes significantly lower blood glucose levels after eating compared to people who ate freshly cooked rice. Those findings are generally well-accepted."

Retrogradation is a real biochemical process where chilling cooked carbohydrate-rich foods converts easily digested starch back into resistant starch. Starch exists in two forms: amylose (hard-to-digest resistant starch) and amylopectin (easily digested). Cooking converts resistant starch into easily digested starch, which spikes blood sugar. Chilling reverses this conversion. Multiple studies since 2015 demonstrate that consuming cooled rice produces significantly lower blood glucose levels compared to freshly cooked rice. However, whether retrogradation actually reduces available calories remains less studied and less conclusively established than its blood sugar effects.

Read at Boston Herald