Reheating pasta makes it healthier?

Who doesn't love pasta? Quick, simple, versatile, and loaded with carbs, it is a favourite of all of us. Most of us are aware that pasta isn’t a slimming food, but it’s too good to avoid. According to various researches, cooling and then reheating pasta makes it less fattening and better for you than the usual cooked pasta. Read to know more about it:

Cooking pasta and then cooling it down changes the structure of the pasta, turning it into something called “resistant starch”. It is called resistant starch because if any starchy food is cooked and cooled, it becomes resistant to the normal enzymes in our gut that break down carbs and release glucose. Resistant starch acts like dietary fiber and tries to resist digestion by passing through the gastrointestinal tract mostly unabsorbed. If you cook pasta and let it cool down, your body will digest it like fibre instead of carbohydrates. But according to various experts, cooking, cooling and then reheating the pasta had an even more dramatic effect. In fact, it reduced the rise in blood glucose by 50 percent.

Cooling and reheating pasta will have the same number of calories but the type of starches might be altered.

Studies show that consuming resistant starches may help with insulin sensitivity, reduce fat accumulation, and make you feel fuller for longer.

There are more interesting ways to turn pasta into a healthy one so that they are low in carbs and easier on blood sugars. Choose whole wheat items over the white stuff, and limit portions to just 1 cup. Add a lot of fiber-rich vegetables and some protein in the form of beans, cheese, chicken, or shrimp.

Recently, nutritionists are pushing towards wholemeal and multi-grain varieties of pasta, because they are extremely rich source of fiber that helps in promoting a slow release of glucose into the blood streams.