Welcome back to the Bite Me Nutrition podcast. I'm going to talk about resistant starch today because it's a very cool topic to talk about. I get lots of questions about it as well, but mostly I want to talk about it because I think it's a relatively easy thing for people to implement into their week. Um, I can have some pretty awesome impacts on your health, uh, particularly your gut health. And I just finished one of my gut health, uh, talks yesterday, um, to a company and we talked a lot about resistance starch and it's very interesting. So.

We're predominantly gonna be talking about RS3 for those of you who are nerds. That's the third type of resistant starch. But essentially what resistant starch is, is it's a type of fiber that exists in food. And fiber, as a lot of us probably know, is something that we personally don't digest or absorb. It's typically something that makes its way all the way through our mouth, through our stomach, to our small intestine, and then to our large intestine or our colon.

Um, where our gut bacteria start to ferment that fiber and they ferment other things as well, but predominantly they're fermenting that fiber and they're forming things like short chain fatty acids, uh, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, ceramides, and all of these other really helpful compounds. So, you know, that's why fiber in general is something that we're always banging on about in terms of your fruit and vegetable, uh, consumption. However, resistant starch is a particularly interesting fiber that seems to have some pretty potent impacts on gut health. It seems to be a fiber that your gut health, that your gut health, that your gut bacteria particularly like. So including it in your diet and increasing the amount of it in your diet seems to be a really good idea. It can also sometimes lead to better blood sugar control, which is something that we need to be mindful of. I'm wary talking about that because there's a lot of people out in the wellness industry that are taking that.

idea of blood sugar control and blood sugar spikes and all of these length, this language that you probably heard, they're taking that to the absolute extreme that you do not need to take it to. But for a lot of people, having a smoother, slower blood sugar response to a meal can result in better appetite regulation, better energy levels. And if you do have a medical condition where you need to be a little bit more mindful of your blood sugar control, say diabetes or PCOS, those sorts of things, then this is another.

good food that not only helps support your gut health, but also might improve your blood sugar control. So kind of wins all around. Resistant starch can be found already in foods like a lot of cereals, beans, lentils, legumes, green bananas, which I understand you probably don't want to eat, but you can get something called green banana flour, which you could use in baking and smoothies and things. So all of those foods are...

good sources of resistant starch, but a really interesting source of resistant starch is cooked and cooled starchy food. So we're particularly talking about rice and wheat products, so rice and pasta. But we also see it forming in things like quinoa and potato and things like that. Essentially what happens when we cook a starch, a starchy carbohydrate, is those starches kind of break down a little bit. They get degraded through heat.

And so we kind of reduce that content a little bit, which makes it easier for us to digest and absorb. However, if we then cool that starch, so let it, I don't need to explain to you what cooling is, let it cool. What happens during the cooling process is a lot of those starches that were broken down recrystallize and reform higher levels of resistant starch. And it's called resistant starch because it resists digestion. There's a helicopter going overhead.

This is the high quality audio that you can expect from this podcast. And so once this, as this cooling process occurs, more and more resistant starch recrystallizes, or sorry, more and more starches recrystallize to form resistant starch. So we see really solid increases, you know, sometimes up to an increase of 30 to 40 % of the resistant starch content of cooked and cooled.

starchy carbohydrates versus starchy carbohydrates that have just been cooked and eaten immediately. Now, of course, there's going to be plenty of times where you cook your rice and you eat it straight away. Like I'm not saying never do that. You know, that's, that would be quite annoying. However, cooking up a batch of rice or cooking up a batch of pasta at the beginning of the week and reheating that over the next couple of days or potentially looking at making yourself like a...

a pasta salad or a potato salad or a rice salad. And getting more of these cooked and then cooled carbohydrates into your diet is going to significantly increase your resistant starch intake, which like we said, benefits the gut health, potential benefits for blood sugar control, all of those sorts of things. So wins all round. So I would encourage you to do that. The other very interesting thing seems to be that once this resistant starch has been formed during the initial cooling process,

you can actually go ahead and reheat that cooled starch and still eat it hot. So I'm not saying you from now on, you must only eat cold rice. You can absolutely reheat those foods and still get the resistant starch benefits. So.

Yeah, that's kind of it. I forgot to write an outline. Sometimes I write an outline to keep myself on task. And today I probably obviously did not, but that's all you need to know about resistant starch. So like I said, I think it's a relatively easy thing for people to add, you know, cooking up a big bunch of rice, especially if you've got a rice cooker is very, very easy. And, you know, kind of results in a bit of bonus meal prep. So you've got some things lying around for you anyhow. So.

I think from a logistical, is that a word? From a practical perspective, logistics. Good Lord. From a practical perspective, it's quite an easy thing to do. And I think the health benefits that you can get from it are extra exciting. So it's absolutely something that I would love for you to have on your radar if you don't already. I'm going to go get myself another coffee because I clearly need one. And I hope you're going to get yourself some cooked and cooled rice or pasta. If you have someone in your life who's got health you care about. That's a weird love language, but if you do, send them this episode to help them upgrade that a little bit more. And I will chat to you next time.