Glycaemic index of some commercially available rice and rice products in Great Britain

Abstract

The glycaemic response to nine types of rice (white basmati, brown basmati, white and brown basmati, easy-cook basmati, basmati and wild rice, long-grain rice, easy-cook long-grain rice, Thai red rice, Thai glutinous rice) and two types of rice vermicelli (Guilin rice vermicelli, Jiangxi rice vermicelli) commercially available in the United Kingdom were compared against a glucose standard in a non-blind, randomized, repeated-measure, crossover design trial. Fourteen healthy subjects (six males, eight females), mean age 38 (standard deviation 16) years and mean body mass index 21.3 (standard deviation 2.3) kg/m(2), were recruited for the study. Subjects were served portions of the test foods and a standard food (glucose), on separate occasions, each containing 50 g available carbohydrates. Capillary blood glucose was measured from finger-prick samples in fasted subjects (-5 and 0 min) and at 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120 min after the consumption of each test food. For each type of food, its glycaemic index (GI) was calculated geometrically by expressing the incremental area under the blood glucose curve as a percentage of each subject's average incremental area under the blood glucose curve for the standard food. The 10 foods exhibited a range of GI values from 37 to 92. The study indicated that rice noodles, long-grain rice, easy-cook long-grain rice and white basmati rice were low-GI foods, whilst all of the other foods were medium-GI and high-GI foods. The information presented in this paper may be useful in helping people select low-GI foods from the customary foods consumed by the British and Asian populations.

A study of Hassawi rice (Oryza sativa L.) in terms of its carbohydrate hydrolysis (in vitro) and glycaemic and insulinaemic indices (in vivo)

“…Longer cooking times may result in a greater gelatinisation of the starch and help increase the glycaemic response. Indeed, this effect of increased cooking time on GI elevation has been put forward by Ranawana et al (2009) and can be supported by data from Panlasigui et al (1991). It is well known that amylose and amylopectin content can also affect the GI.…”

Rice and the Glycemic Index

“…The differences were not due to unabsorbed carbohydrate but were related to their physicochemical properties, such as gelatinization temperature, minimum cooking time, amylograph consistency, and volume expansion upon cooking. 16,54,63 They concluded that amylose content alone was not a good predictor of the starch digestion rate or glycemic response. Rice varieties with similar high amylose contents can differ in physicochemical (gelatinization) properties, and these in turn can influence starch digestibility and the blood glucose response.…”

“…57 Numerous processing conditions and storage in a cool environment may result in up to 30% starch retrogradation -that is, crystallization of the amorphous system created by gelatinization. 59 Ranawana et al 16 suggested that the gelatinized starch has not undergone sufficient retrogradation, resulting in a higher availability of digestible starch for gastrointestinal enzymes.…”

“…This variation has been attributed to a multitude of factors, including amylose content, dietary fiber content, physical size and form, post-harvest treatments (parboiling and milling), and cooking (gelatinization). 13,15,16 The awareness of the general public regarding health foods has been on the rise recently, and people are looking for the right variety of rice and more efficient methods of cooking it.…”

Fibre–enriched and whole wheat noodles

“…Rice noodles in a broad sense have been identifi ed as intermediate to low glycemic index foods, with glycemic index values ranging from 37 (Ranawana et al , 2009) to 83 (Juliano, 2005). This occurs even without specifi c interventions to decrease starch digestibility.…”