Most of us love starchy carbohydrate foods like bread, pasta and potatoes — but they’re not always good for our health. Although starch is an important part of a healthy diet, it’s easily broken down. As soon as we consume starch the body very quickly starts to digest it, releasing sugars into the blood which in turn causes our bodies to release the hormone insulin. It’s a boom and bust cycle that can take a toll on our health.

Dr Chris van Tulleken joined forces with Dr Denise Robertson from the University of Surrey to carry out an experiment. We wanted to find out if there is a simple way to make starchy foods better for us without changing a single ingredient. What no one expected was that we’d make a brand new scientific discovery along the way.

When starch is cooked in water and then cooled it changes shape. The new structure is resistant to enzymes in our body and so can’t be digested- it’s known as ‘resistant starch’. Resistant starch passes through the body without being digested until it reaches the colon where it acts like fibre and feeds our ‘good bacteria’.