Super starch, part two
How do you get started with adding more resistant starch into your diet? Studies suggest consuming 15 grams of resistant starch per day bring benefits to blood sugars, gut health, and cardiovascular health. Resistant starch isn’t listed on the food label, so you’ll have to do a little googling to tally up your intake, or ask your dietitian to help you out.
Super starch recipes
Oats - Let’s start with my favorite breakfast food - oats. Oats naturally contain resistant starch and soaking oats boosts it, while cooking decreases it. Rolled oats are best to use. Try my go-to overnight oats recipe (oats soak overnight) from Love and Lemons.
Green bananas - Okay, now onto a least favorite food of mine - green bananas… I’m not a banana gal, personally, but green bananas? This is a hard sell! Many online articles suggested “throw green banana in a smoothie” but not many bloggers were brave enough to suggest an actual recipe. This research did lead me to green banana flour which is a powder that can be added to any smoothie (like this one!) and many other foods.
Potatoes - This will take a bit more work as potatoes lose most of their resistant starch in the cooking process…UNLESS you use the magical cook-cool-reheat process which recreates the resistant starch (see Part 1 of this blog for more details). Chilling cooked potatoes in the fridge for at least 24 hours is recommended before you reheat them. Are you up to the task of planning ahead for meals? Give these crispy potatoes a try!
Legumes - Beans, lentils, and peas have tons of resistant starch in their raw form and only lose a little bit in cooking. You could cook and chill them to boost it, but for this food group I don’t think the delay is worth the small increase in resistant starch. Some more good news - canned beans count, they contain resistant starch! Try my family’s favorite bean soup Mediterranean White Bean Soup from Feel Good Foodie.
Rice - Do the same planning and prepping as potatoes - cook-cool-reheat. A healthy fried rice recipe is the perfect solution as many fried rice recipes typically suggest using leftover chilled rice anyway. Remember you can cook-cool-reheat pasta to boost resistant starch, too!
Get more insight into food, nutrition, and super cool stuff like resistant starch by meeting with one of our dietitians.
Resources:
Dive deep into the science behind green bananas and green banana flour with an article from the National Institutes of Health
Learn more about resistant starch in Verywell’s helpful article.
Author: Jodi Serafin, RDN, CDCES