Should cold rice be left as is or reheated before eating?

The habit of eating cold rice is very common in every family. However, if rice is used and stored incorrectly, it will cause many serious health problems.

1. What is the difference between cold rice and hot rice?

Cold rice contains higher levels of resistant starch (also known as resistant starch) than freshly cooked rice.

Resistant starch is a type of fiber that the body cannot digest. However, this type of starch can be fermented in the digestive tract by certain beneficial bacteria.

When beneficial bacteria grow, they overwhelm and destroy harmful bacteria, thus having a positive effect in protecting the digestive tract.

Cold rice with sesame salt is a favorite dish of many people.

The fermentation process produces short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which influence two hormones - peptides, glucagon-1 (GPL-1) and peptide YY (PYY) - that regulate human appetite.

In addition, these two hormones are also known as anti-diabetic and anti-obesity hormones. Because they have the ability to improve insulin sensitivity to help regulate blood sugar levels and the ability to reduce fat accumulation in the abdomen.

2. Health risks of eating cold rice

However, this habit also has many potential risks that negatively affect health.

Eating reheated rice or fried rice can increase the risk of food poisoning caused by Bacillus cereus. This is a common bacteria and is the leading cause of food poisoning.

Symptoms of Bacillus cereus poisoning include abdominal pain, diarrhea, or vomiting within 15 to 30 minutes of ingestion.

Improper use and storage of cold rice can cause poisoning.

Pathogens such as Bacillus cereus grow rapidly at temperatures between 4 and 60 ̊C. Therefore, if cold rice is stored at room temperature, the spores will have the conditions to grow, multiply and produce toxins leading to poisoning.

Although everyone who eats cold rice is at risk of food poisoning, people with weakened immune systems such as children, the elderly, and pregnant women are often more severely affected.

3. How to store and eat cold rice safely

Below are some important notes to help minimize the risk of food poisoning from eating cold rice:

Should be refrigerated

First, chill the rice for an hour by dividing it into small, airtight containers. Hot rice should be allowed to cool before being refrigerated.

Refrigerate rice within an hour by dividing the rice into covered containers and bowls.

Leftover cold rice after each meal should not be left at room temperature for more than 2 hours.

After this time, bacterial spores can grow and multiply rapidly. If stored in the refrigerator, ensure that the maximum temperature is 5 ̊C to prevent spores from forming. Cold rice can be stored in the refrigerator for about 3 to 4 days.

Eating cold rice is a habit and hobby of many people. Eating cold rice is safe as long as it is stored and prepared properly.

Reheating leftover cold rice from a previous meal is a daily occurrence in every Vietnamese family. If you do not know how to properly preserve cold rice, it can easily cause potential health hazards to your family from this seemingly harmless food.

Not only in families, on the streets, there are many shops selling fried rice with beef and cucumber, fried rice with mixed ingredients. Among them, the use of cold rice of unknown origin is many times more worrying.

Fried rice is a popular street food and is loved for its deliciousness and convenience.

What do the experts say?

Speaking about this issue, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Duy Thinh, an expert from the Institute of Biotechnology and Food, University of Science and Technology, said that people's concerns about the high risk of poisoning from eating fried rice at restaurants are completely justified.

Because the situation of using cold rice for frying in restaurants is very common. And whether they use cold rice for a long time or not is difficult to verify.

There are still many issues that need attention in preserving cold rice and food safety in popular restaurants.

Therefore, eating fried rice regularly is not recommended, because in fact fried rice with oil can cause indigestion symptoms for the user.

Now there are many ways to make cold rice not monotonous and boring but also become a delicious snack.

According to Master Tran Quoc Hung - lecturer at Hanoi Medical College, poisoning due to reusing cold rice is less common at home than at restaurants because families usually cook in small quantities.

In restaurants, they often cook a lot of rice to serve customers. If there is leftover rice, they often reheat it or use it to make fried rice.

“In my opinion, families should not cook leftover rice at every meal, because anything left over for a long time is not good because it will spoil, even if the rice has been stored in the refrigerator,” Dr. Hung advised.

Do not store rice in the refrigerator for more than 24 hours and reheat rice more than twice.

According to him, in case there is leftover rice, while the rice is still hot, the user needs to cool it quickly. You can put the whole pot of rice in a bowl of cold water, then let it cool and store it in the refrigerator.

However, you should not use the refrigerator to store rice for more than 24 hours and reheat rice more than twice, because the reheating process will destroy all the nutrients in the rice.

As for the information that eating cold rice causes cancer, many doctors have confirmed that this is incorrect information because the habit of eating cold rice is very common and there has not been any recorded case of stomach cancer due to eating reheated cold rice.

According to Giao thong newspaper