Pasta is a carbohydrate-rich food, made primarily of flour, butter and cheese. For weight watchers and diabetics, it is a no-go — unless we find a trick to make it healthier. While scrolling through the internet, we came across a post that shared an easy hack to make your favourite dish a guilt-free indulgence.
Pasta’s high glycaemic index increases the risk of diabetes and weight gain, but if you cook it and refrigerate it once cool, it becomes a source of resistant starch. “Cooking and cooling the pasta for at least 7-8 hours can make it a lot more healthier and better for over all health! It increases resistant starch, which is beneficial for you!” said Mumbai-based nutritionist Deepsikha Jain.
According to her, resistant starch is easier to digest and reduces the overall calorie count of the dish by 30-50%. It also increases the fiber content which makes it a great source of food for all those who have diabetes and a trying to lose weight.
How does resistant starch work?
The expert noted that:
- It ‘resists’ the breakdown of starch into sugars in the small intestine and moves to the large intestine.
- There, it ferments and feeds good gut bacteria to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFA)
- SCFAs further break down into butyrate, which helps improve intestinal integrity, reduce inflammation and populate the good gut bugs.
Do you like eating pasta? (Source: Freepik)
What are its health benefits?
Resistant starch also has a lower glycemic index. It promotes satiety, reduces impact on postprandial blood glucose levels as compared to easily digestible carbs, improves insulin sensitivity. It works as a prebiotic, improves absorption of minerals and boosts liver function. This makes resistant starch a preferable choice for diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, metabolic syndrome, gut health and immunity.
Concurring, Dr Vidhi Dhingra, Senior Dietician, vHealth by Aetna told indianexpress.com that if we include these foods in moderation and try the cooling post-cooking rule, it helps in increasing resistant starch which may reduce the glycemic index and, in turn, improve insulin sensitivity.
“Cooking and cooling for 8-10 hours can indeed help you. Cooled pasta has more than two times the amount of resistant starch than freshly cooked pasta. The resistance starch helps boost gut health, which means an increase in the good bacteria that help decrease levels of constipation. It also improves the body’s ability to respond to insulin. This means lower risk of insulin resistance and its accompanying chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes,” functional nutritionist Mugdha Pradhan, CEO and Founder, iThrive, added.
