5 Tips to enjoy rice without spiking blood sugar
- Lucy Zhang, RD, CDE
- Mar 10
- 3 min read
Rice is a common carbohydrate choice that can be challenging when it comes to managing blood sugar. However, that does not mean you have to eliminate rice from your usual meal rotation. Here are five ways to make rice more blood sugar friendly.
Opt for brown rice or parboiled rice
Compared to most white rice varieties, parboiled rice and brown rice are lower glycemic index options, meaning they cause a slower, more gentle rise in blood sugar.
If white rice is a non-negotiable for you, try cooking a mix of white rice and brown rice to start. Alternatively, you can try mixing in quinoa or barley with your rice when cooking to increase protein and soluble fibre, both of which help to slow the absorption of glucose.
Keep portions to within ONE cup of cooked rice.
As with any carbohydrate choice, it is important to be mindful of portion size. I would recommend limiting the amount of rice at a meal to within about 1 cup of cooked rice. This is equal to about 45 g of net carbs, which is quite reasonable for a meal.
While you don’t need to measure your rice portions on a meal to meal basis. You may find it helpful to measure out one cup of cooked rice the first few times so that you get an idea of how much it is visually on your usual plate or usual bowls. This will help you to estimate portion sizes moving forward.
If one cup of cooked rice is significantly less than your usual rice portions, be sure to pay close attention of tips 3 and 4 to ensure you are filling up with the other components of the balanced plate to support satiety.
Pair rice with protein.
If your meal is primarily rice, you can expect a faster rise in blood sugar. As always, we want to pair our carbs with a source of protein to help slow the digestion and absorption of sugar. Ensuring to pair rice with protein foods will help to provide a more gradual rise in blood sugar postmeal.
This can be any protein choices you enjoy. Examples include chicken, fish, meat, eggs, dairy (e.g. paneer), soy (edamame, tofu), legumes (e.g. chickpeas, beans, lentils).
One thing to note is that while legumes are a great heart healthy plant-based protein, they do naturally contain some carbohydrate (about 15 g of net carbs for every ½ cup of cooked legumes). Just be mindful to consider that when thinking about your overall carbohydrate budget at a meal.
Be sure to make half your meal non-starchy vegetables.
Other than protein, we are looking for that half a plate of non-starchy vegetables to round out our balanced plate.
As always, this could be any non-starchy vegetables you enjoy, any vegetables that’s easy to prepare, or just what’s on sale that week. We want to incorporate the vegetables for fibre and volume. Along with protein, the fibre from our vegetables can be helpful in reducing the speed at which we absorb glucose from our rice, and the increased volume can help to make our meals more satiating.
Cool cooked rice to increase resistant starch content.
Allowing rice to cool after cooking increases resistant starch content. This reduces the rise in blood sugar after eating as resistant starch is not broken down into glucose by our digestive enzymes. Instead, these starches “resist” digestion in the small intestine, and travel on to our large intestine to become a source of food for good gut bacteria.
You can incorporate this cooking method in your day to day routines by cooking a larger batch of rice, then refrigerating overnight to increase resistant starch. The next day when you are eating rice, just reheat to enjoy. Reheating does not break down the resistant starch formed.
References
Sonia S, Witjaksono F, Ridwan R. Effect of cooling of cooked white rice on resistant starch content and glycemic response. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2015;24(4):620-5. doi: 10.6133/apjcn.2015.24.4.13. PMID: 26693746.
Strozyk, S., Rogowicz-Frontczak, A., Pilacinski, S. et al. Influence of resistant starch resulting from the cooling of rice on postprandial glycemia in type 1 diabetes. Nutr. Diabetes 12, 21 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41387-022-00196-1
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