The rice cookers she promoted, called low-sugar rice cookers or hypoglycemic rice cookers, originated in South Korea and are very popular in China, Japan and South Korea.
In the publicity, eating the rice cooked by this rice cooker can achieve the magical effect of controlling diabetes and losing weight. Is it really so effective, or is it necessary to collect another round of IQ tax? Let's analyze it.
Actually, it's just cooking.
In the publicity materials of this kind of hypoglycemic rice cooker, the rice they cook is called "sugar-removing/sugar-removing" rice.
According to the working principle of this rice cooker, it is actually very simple to cook the rice without sugar/sugar, that is, cook the rice until it is half cooked, drain the rice soup, pick up the half cooked rice and steam it further. In the cooked rice, the starch in the rice is partially dissolved in the rice soup and drained, so the total starch content will be reduced.
Introduction to the working principle of a brand hypoglycemic rice cooker, source: network.
In fact, this method is not new. It is equivalent to making people eat less starch while eating the same amount of food, but still have almost the same satiety, thus playing a role in controlling blood sugar.
In many places in China, cooking is done in this way every day. People call this method "steaming rice" or "fishing rice", also called "draining rice" or "Ceng Zi rice".
Part of amylopectin in rice was removed.
The main component of rice is starch, which is a polysaccharide composed of glucose, which can be imagined as a pile of glucose held together.
According to the connection mode of these glucose, that is, the way of hugging each other, starch can be divided into two categories:
One is amylose, the digestion speed of amylose is relatively slow, and the blood sugar rises slowly after eating, and the range is low;
The other is amylopectin, which is digested quickly. After eating it, blood sugar rises quickly and with a high range.
Therefore, rice with low amylopectin content is more conducive to maintaining the stability of postprandial blood sugar than rice with high amylopectin content, thus achieving the purpose of controlling sugar.
Source: Network
Starch can be divided into amylopectin and amylose according to the different polymerization methods of glucose.
In the process of cooking, with the increase of water temperature, amylopectin will dissolve in water. At this time, after the rice is separated from the soup, the amylopectin can be removed together with the soup, which reduces the amylopectin content in the rice and weakens the ability of rice to raise blood sugar.
This principle is used in both the folk methods of "steaming rice, fishing rice, draining rice and drying rice" and the "sugar-removed rice" steamed by hypoglycemic rice cookers.
It is really helpful to control the rise of blood sugar. However, the effect is not as invincible as advertised. On the contrary, eating too much will still cause a significant increase in blood sugar.
First of all, there is no food that can lower blood sugar. As long as you eat foods that can decompose glucose, such as glucose and starch, your blood sugar will rise, only to a certain extent. The ability of food to raise blood sugar is measured by glycemic index (GI). The lower the GI value, the more stable the blood sugar can be. The higher the GI value, the higher the induced blood sugar.
Sugar-lowering rice cookers can indeed reduce the GI value of rice, but it needs to be questioned whether the degree of reduction by this method alone has clinical significance for diabetic patients. After all, the amount of amylopectin that rice cookers can reduce is very limited, and the contents of amylose and amylopectin in different types of rice are different.
To take a step back, even if all amylopectin is removed, amylose can be digested and decomposed into glucose, which leads to an increase in blood sugar.
No matter what food it is, even if it is labeled as "low GI" and friendly to diabetics, once the "seal" of restricting intake is lifted, excessive intake will make the blood sugar rise out of control.
Source: Luo Haiku Station
Therefore, we can say that the hypoglycemic rice cooker can play an auxiliary role in controlling sugar, but the key to the diet of diabetic patients is to control the total intake of carbohydrates in a single meal according to their own blood sugar and medication.
As mentioned above, the main component of rice is starch, which is combined with glucose. Amylose accounts for about 30% of the total starch and amylopectin accounts for about 70% (but the contents of amylose and amylopectin in different kinds of rice are quite different, such as japonica rice and indica rice). The amylose content in japonica rice is slightly higher, almost 30+%, while that in indica rice is lower than 30%, and that in glutinous rice does not contain amylose.
According to the propaganda of major brands of hypoglycemic rice cookers, amylopectin can be reduced by about 20% during cooking. So for rice, the total starch content, that is, the sugar content, has indeed decreased.
Reducing amylopectin is indeed beneficial to control blood sugar, but it will not lower blood sugar. When eating starch, starch (whether linear or branched) will be digested and hydrolyzed by human amylase, which will be decomposed into glucose and absorbed by human body, and blood sugar will also rise.
The only gratifying thing is that, due to the relatively small amount of amylopectin, compared with ordinary rice, the blood sugar of sugar-discharged/sugar-removed rice rises more gently after eating, which is very beneficial to diabetic patients who need to control their blood sugar level smoothly.
Therefore, as long as you eat rice, your blood sugar will rise. There is no rice that does not raise blood sugar when opened, and there is no rice cooker that can cook this anti-science rice.
Not bad, maybe it's just bad and troublesome.
If the amylopectin is drained by a hypoglycemic rice cooker, the rice will lose some volume and viscosity, become clear particles, and taste hard and elastic, but there is no soft taste.
However, there are other economical and effective methods to control the digestibility of starch in staple food.
For example, try to replace polished rice with coarse grains, such as brown rice, buckwheat, miscellaneous beans and corn. Coarse grains are rich in dietary fiber, which can hold sugar tightly in the gastrointestinal tract to slow down its digestion and provide rich vitamins and minerals for the body. Why not?
Generally speaking, the so-called hypoglycemic rice cooker itself has a scientific basis and has a positive effect on sugar control. But some people, such as TV shopping, customer service and famous entrepreneurs, like to blow their products to all kinds of metaphysics.
This is also a common problem in our country. Every time some new products appear, merchants like to blow a wave when they open up the market. Take the blender as an example. When it first appeared in China, businessmen boasted that it could break plant cell walls and decompose molecular nutrients. In fact, as long as the juice is produced, the cell wall is bound to break. You don't need tools, just bite and chew, and all plants will break their walls.