How to Cook Rice to Lower Arsenic Levels

How to Cook Rice to Lower Arsenic Levels
Depending on how you cook rice, the trace arsenic levels can be reduced up to 60%. ShutterStock
Michael Greger
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Boiling rice like pasta reduces arsenic levels, but how much nutrition is lost?

Cooking rice in a high water-to-rice ratio reduces toxic arsenic content, which I discuss in my video How to Cook Rice to Lower Arsenic Levels. What exactly does that mean? Well, as you can see at 0:16 in my video, if you boil rice like pasta and then drain off the water at the end, you can drop arsenic levels in half—50 to 60 percent of the arsenic gets poured down the drain—whereas the typical way we make rice, boiling off the water in a rice cooker or pot, for example, doesn’t help. In fact, it may even make things worse if the water you’re using to cook the rice has arsenic in it, too, which is a problem that exists for about three million Americans, as about 8 percent of public water supplies exceed the current legal arsenic limits.
Michael Greger
Michael Greger
Author
Michael Greger, MD, FACLM, is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized professional speaker on a number of important public health issues. He has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, testified before Congress, appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” and “The Colbert Report,” and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous “meat defamation” trial. This article was originally published on NutritionFacts.org
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