Overcooked Food

[nsaidcolitis]

I was wondering if anyone had a reaction to overcooked food. For example I've noticed I have a reaction to overcooked starch, even potatoes, oatmeal and most of all white rice which is overcooked all the time. If I eat things al dente I seem to be fine. This might be a crazy reaction....are there any enzymes related to overcooked starch that I've lost? is that a different sugar type the one in overcooked starch? I think I might be the only one in the world with this... I hope once the inflammation calms down wether its from colitis or gastritis I can eat those foods again right now my diet is very limited to mostly vegetables (no calories) and brown rice (impossible to overcook) and even when overcooked they give me trouble.

[tex]

As far as I'm aware, overcooking cannot change a starch type. Therefore while overcooking might possibly deplete some of the nutrients available (if you throw away the water after cooking the food), it shouldn't change the enzymes required for digestion after cooking. Starch characteristics are determined by the genetics of the plant, not by cooking. However, starch can be converted to sugar, and vice versa, by the proper enzymes. But again, this is usually done independent of cooking. For example, when a seed-producing plant is growing, just prior to maturity the sugar in the endosperm of the seed is converted into starch, so that it will have a much better storage life. Then when a seed begins to germinate, an enzyme is released that progressively converts the starch in the endosperm into sugar so that the developing sprout can use it as fuel. A similar process occurs in the human digestive system, when starch is degraded to sugars and further split by specific enzymes.

There are 2 basic types of starch, amylopectin and amylose. Amylopectin is much easier to digest than amylose starch. Common starch is made of about 70% amylopectin by weight, though this fraction varies depending on the genetics of the plant that produces it. Higher amylopectin percentages are found in medium-grain rice (which can go up to 100% in glutinous rice), waxy potatos, and waxy corn, for example. Long-grain rice, amylomaize (aka waxy corn), and russet potatoes are examples of foods that contain lower fractions of amylopectin and higher percentages of amylose. IOW, waxy potatoes are much easier to digest than russet potatoes, for example.

But none of that should be significantly affected by the degree of cooking.

Amylose starch is sometimes referred to as "resistant starch" because of it's higher resistance to digestion, often resulting in incomplete digestion. Because of this characteristic, foods containing resistant starches (high amylose content) are often thought of as diet foods, implying that one can eat more of them while reducing the risk of gaining weight. IMO this is a very poor way to go about dieting, since partially-digested or undigested foods are an open invitation to opportunistic bacteria that will ferment the residue in the colon, resulting in gas, bloating, and possibly D.

Most of us here cannot tolerate oats (because the avenin in oats is very similar to gluten in wheat) or brown rice (because of the high fiber content). But again, this has nothing to do with starch.

I hope that some of this is helpful.

Tex

[nsaidcolitis]

Thanks a lot Tex. I didn't know that about oats. Maybe I should just stay clear from them.

However, I noticed white rice when overcooked which sends my tummy to sound like a motorcycle taste sweet and its texture is soft and starts giving me pain and sends me to the bathroom. Maybe it's bacteria eating the sugar and giving me inflammation?. However when al dente, my tummy is calm and i can finish my meal.

It must be i'm intolerant to amylopectin or starch in general. Maybe it's more avaialble for digestion when overcooked and i lack the enzymes for digesting them at this point. It happens with all starch.

I am definitely not the only one. A few people I found tolerate brown rice better than white rice, it must be because of the same reasons. I gotta admit the pain from brown rice is nothing compared to the one from white rice (when cooked soft or worse too soft). Maybe it has nothing to do with colitis but my gastritis.

[Gabes-Apg]

Maybe it has nothing to do with colitis but my gastritis.

this article reiterates the - what works for one, may not work for another, not everything is MC related and why listen to your body is best approach

http://www.gutmicrobiotawatch.org/en/20 ... ave-on-us/

Researchers focused on post-meal responses and on how blood sugar levels changed in the two hours following a meal. The data they gathered revealed that individuals have vastly different responses to the same food. For instance, some people’s glycaemic responses spiked after eating a tomato, whereas other individuals did not experience the same effect. “Our first surprise was to discover on a very large scale the enormous variability we saw in people’s responses to even identical meals. There are profound differences between individuals. In some cases, individuals even have opposite responses and this is a big hole in the literature,” Segal pointed out.

[nsaidcolitis]

woaha gaves i didn't knoW tHaT. THANKS fOR tHAT article it gives me hope now that i remember when i stuck to a diet that i tolerated well got my inflammation down and digestion was superb and could eat soft rice, that was last year hopefully my system can go back to that state. I can't think of me living on just eggs, meat and a few vegetables it would be extremely hard ! wait isn't that paleo .

[tex]

Maybe the problem is that you're sensitive to rice. It's not common, but a few of us here are definitely sensitive to rice, as verified by their EnteroLab stool tests. Some of us can't eat any grains without reacting.

Tex

[Chef]

I was wondering if anyone had a reaction to overcooked food. For example I've noticed I have a reaction to overcooked starch, even potatoes, oatmeal and most of all white rice which is overcooked all the time. If I eat things al dente I seem to be fine. This might be a crazy reaction....are there any enzymes related to overcooked starch that I've lost? is that a different sugar type the one in overcooked starch? I think I might be the only one in the world with this... I hope once the inflammation calms down wether its from colitis or gastritis I can eat those foods again right now my diet is very limited to mostly vegetables (no calories) and brown rice (impossible to overcook) and even when overcooked they give me trouble.

What Tex said was mostly accurate, and I am very impressed with his knowledge of starch, but I will add on to it as well.

Yes, high amylose starch (typically 50-70% amylose, 30-50% amylopectin) is considered a resistant starch, but there are actually four types of resistant starches. If interested see the link below.

http://authoritynutrition.com/resistant-starch-101/

Type 3- retrograded starch. This is starch that has in essence tightly recrystallized after being cooked and allowed to cool. Stale bread (ie croutons) are a great example of retrograded starch, and pasta is another one. So by overcooking the pasta you are not chemically altering the starch, which is simply made of many thousand glucose units linked together (linearly for amylose, and highly branched for amylopectin), but you are physically changing how they are bound together helically by hydrogen bonds. This is one of the reason iodine will turn starch blue (amylose) and red (amylopectin) as it binds within the amylose helix as a long polyiodide complex or in the shorter amylopectin branch helices as short polyiodide chains (red). Therefore cooking Al Dente ensures that more of the starch is tightly-bound together (aka more resistant) and thus more will pass through you and not be absorbed by the body or fermented in the gut by bacteria.

Type 4 is the chemically-modified starches such as acetylated starch or hydroxypropylated starches. With these the glucose units have new chemical groups attached to them, and so the amylase enzymes that would normally be able to break the linkages of the starch backbone can no longer fit properly and thus the enzymes will not work as effectively on these starches and thus they will also act as a fibre (resistant starch).

Type 1 & 2 resistant starches are completely uncooked starch which means they are still in their granule form (a tightly packed sphere with the characteristic outwardly-radiating growth ring structure). These have crystallinity as seen by the 'Maltese crosses' when granules are observed under a microscope using plane polarized light (see link https://www.google.ca/search?q=maltese+ ... 42&bih=888 ). It is known that these uncooked starch granules are less digestable, because in many studies where feces is collected after feeding uncooked starch, the granules are still seen in their unchanged spherical condition after passage through the GI, and maintain their 'Maltese crosses' showing they maintained their crystallinity. Cooking starch irreversibly disrupts the starch granule freeing the amylose and amylopectin molecules to be more readily digested by the amylase enzymes (see link for short video of heat gelatinization of potato starch under microscope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl95yJ3tnA4 ). When this happens, there is no more Maltese cross as the crystallinity (long range order of the molecules) has been lost.

A good analogy for this is with raw peanuts and with processed peanut butter. You could have the same exact mass and composition thus the same amount of caloric intake, but it is well documented that you will absorb more calories from eating the same amount of peanut butter compared to the peasnuts as witnessed by the more 'heterogenous' sample that will make it out the other side of your GI. They are chemically the same, but physically they are in a very different form where the one will resist digestion much more than the other.

As for thinking your body no longer produces amylases, it is possible but unlikely. Also, our body produces several different types of amylases, not just one). There is even an amylase in our saliva, and you can test for it your self by holding rice in your mouth without swallowing for a few minutes allowing your saliva to lather it -- over time it should start to taste sweeter in your mouth as the enzyme breaks it down from a polymer into its constituent sugar units.

[nsaidcolitis]

thank you so much for all that wonderful info.

i can tolerate brown rice and rice flour and rice cereal no problems other than the fiber problem, its rough i feel it. but today i decided to try to eat white rice using 1 1/2 cups of water 1 cup of rice and the rice came out soft...needless to say inmediately got a reaction reflux tummy started to sound like a motorcycle followed by pain bloating belching, etc.

the only explanation i can give if the starch after overcooking isn't changed or uses the same enzymes is that right now my inflammation doesn't allow me to produce those enzymes in quantities necessary to digest all that starch in soft rice. Pasta gives me the same problems even rice pasta easily overcooked and taste sweet in my mouth.

Potatoes, oatmeal, brown rice give me no problems unless they are overcooked. White rice no problem when its al dente which is extremely hard to get it that way I have tried so hard to get it aldente but not undercooked and only got it right 2/100 times lol.

I am glad i found out this trigger i didn't really notice it until i started eating other things than white rice but it's extremely weird and somtimes scares me i will lose the ability to be ok with carbs some day

[Erica P-G]

Hi...a rice to try is white Minute Rice in the red box with white lettering....I don't think I can get it mushy if I tried. If you truly are reactive to rice, this one may be the tester for you.

[nsaidcolitis]

thats a super great idea ! I think I'm going to order a lot of boxes enough to last me until my inflammation calms down.


Today I had potatoes one overcooked too soft, felt nausea, belching but little pain. Now eating regular cooked potatoes...no symptoms. Rice is the worst though I need al dente, brown rice is fine but the fiber worries me and its got anti nutrients too.

Give me overcooked starch....hear the motorcycle and belching and bloating and .....the bathroom issue.

Give me gluten...hear my heart beating out of whack with arrhythmia and watch the EKG changes...cuz my pericarditis acts up haha.

Honestly i could be the best human guinea pig for these kind of inflammatory diseases and their response to food.

But from what i read in this forum. Some people get bloated when using a slow cooker especially for protein foods like chicken...maybe we are not meant to overcook stuff too much...it becomes undigestible.