Resistant Starch RS

(Troy John) #1

OK, so I have read posts about RS but what I have found on Google is that a person on Keto can have cooled rice and potatoes without worrying about the carb content. I am not sure if I got that right because on the posts here, the discussion is centered around the gut benefits of RS and not specifically eating RS as part of the keto diet. What am I missing? Anyone actually consuming cooled rice and potatoes?

(Doug) #2

The problem for people who want to keep carbohydrates low is that only a tiny bit of the carbs become “resistant starch,” around 0.5% to 1% or 2%. With days of work and repetitive processing, some college laboratories have achieved 5% or 6%. Even then, though, you’d still have 94% or 95% as much regular starch as before.

(Jane) #3

I’ve read those claims for years and never bothered to test since going keto even though I have a KetoMojo and would be easy to do. Somehow I doubt that cooling down rice and potatoes magically turns the carbs into something we can’t break down into glucose.

Now it could have other effects on the gut, but I suspect the insulin response to the glucose would be the same. Not willing to go out of ketosis twice to test a theory. Once eating hot rice and or potatoes and then again eating them cold.

It would be really cool if someone did that while wearing a continuous glucose monitor.

(Robin) #4

Well, that certainly got my attention! I have not heard of it. RS??? I only know I would spend at least an entire days worth of my carbs on 1/2 cup of that. We can all choose how and where we spend our 20g (or less) of carbs. But that wouldn’t be on my short list. I eat a lot of food, all of it yummy, certainly not bland. And I have zero cravings, so I’d be afraid to add those carbs in… carbs=cravings, for me. I’ll be following this with interest.

(Bob M) #5

If you want resistant starch, try potato starch. I was able to stay in ketosis eating it. I don’t know if it had an effect on my blood sugar, but it did not seem to have a benefit for me. Also, go slow, otherwise it’s easy to get a lot of gas and the like.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

Resistant starch is a commercial product designed to re-add fibre inexpensively to products from which the natural fibre has been removed.

There is a scientist who claims that you can make your own resistant starch at home, from rice or potatoes, usually, but when you look into his claim, it appears that you can make the resistant starch increase from something like 1.3% of the starch to 1.6%, by a complicated process of heating and cooling the cooked item. The problem is that when you go to eat the rice or the potato, you have to heat it up to eating temperature very carefully, or the resistant starch will break back down again into regular starch; i.e., glucose.

Is the effort worth it? Only you can judge. Does it make it possible to eat potatoes or rice? Well, given that only a very small percentage of the starch becomes resistant, it is clearly not going to turn the great majority of the starch into indigestible fibre, so again, it becomes your judgement call.

#7

I’ve decided that is an absurd claim. If it were true, then foods like macaroni salad, potato salad, and rice pudding (w/artificial sweeteners) would all be low carb foods.

They may have slightly fewer net carbs when measured, but not a significant enough amount for them to easily fit into a 20 net carbs per day way of eating.

(Doug) #8

Definitely. :grin::smile:

To start with, we have to eat the potato skin to get most of the naturally-occuring undigestible fiber. Without eating the skin, about half of even the possible resistant starch isn’t even going to be there.

From what I see, baked potatoes have more RS than boiled. And you have to eat them cold - any reheating reduces the amount of RS.

If we’re going to eat a potato, let’s make it a nice big one, about 1 lb. or 450 g. Most of it is just water, after all…

We start with ~2% undigestible carbs (including the skin). A study found that eating cooked and cooled potatoes - have to eat them cold - had 4.3%. The study was funded by the United States Potato Board, so you know they were looking for high numbers. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

So, our potato went from about 9 to 19 grams of RS, and from roughly 78 grams of digestible carbs to 68.

(Carnivore for the win) #9
(Billy Stephens) #10

Potato starch is on graded cheese to keep it from sticking together. I have read that for of resistance starch is good.

(Robin) #11

Hi @Billy7871. I always wondered what the powder was on processed shredded cheese. That explains it.

(Bob M) #12

Corn starch is also used on cheese. I THINK I have an issue (blood sugar goes high) with corn starch, but not potato starch. But would be interesting to test.

Also, don’t know whether the small amount they add to cheese would or would not be a detriment.

(Jane) #13

I never worried about it. Mostly I grate my own, but sometimes I am lazy and just buy the pre-grated.