IF you’re trying to reduce the number of calories you consume from carbs, then listen up.

Because scientists have come up with a handy hack for slashing the number of calories in a portion of rice by half.

A regular cup of rice contains around 240 calories — but that can be halved by adding a teaspoon of coconut oil to the water you’re boiling it in, and then refrigerating your drained rice for 12 hours.

Experts looked at 38 different types of rice from Sri Lanka.

And they found that adding the oil to the water before adding the rice, simmering for 40 minutes then refrigerating for 12 hours, there was 10 times more resistant starch, compared to normal rice.

Most starchy carbs are broken down into glucose (sugar) by the small intestine, which then gets absorbed into the bloodstream. That can either be used as available energy or it gets stored as fat in the body (which is why so many people try to steer clear of things like pasta and bread if dieting).

But resistant starch doesn’t go through the same process.

Adding oil to the water changes the structure of the rice’s starch granules — making them resistant to our digestive enzymes.

That basically means that by making rice more starch resistant, fewer calories from it get absorbed into the body.

Team leader Sudhair A. James is from the College of Chemical Sciences, Colombo, Sri Lanka, and he said that the research was part of an effort to reduce the global obesity crisis.

After your body converts carbs into glucose, any leftover fuel gets converted into a glycogen, which is stored in the liver and muscles as immediately available energy.

You absolutely need enough glycogen at any one time — if you don’t, you’ll end up suffering from hypoglycaemia (which can ultimately kill you).

However, James said that “the issue is that the excess glucose that doesn’t get converted to glycogen ends up turning into fat, which can lead to excessive weight or obesity”.

The cooling of the rice is as essential to the process as adding the oil.

It’s during the refrigerating bit that the soluble part of the starch leaves the granules.

James explained that cooling the rice for 12 hours also helps turn it into a resistant starch by changing the molecules on the outside of the rice grains.

It’s not clear whether other oils like sunflower or olive oil would work just as well as coconut oil — it might just be that coconut oil is the most available oil in Sri Lanka.

But at the very least, it’s worth cooking your rice the night before you need it and then keeping it in the fridge.

That way, not only are you slashing calories but you’ve already got half of your dinner prepped and ready to go!

But should you be reheating rice?

You can get food poisoning from eating reheated rice. But it’s not the reheating that causes illness — it’s the way rice has been stored beforehand.

According to the National Health Service in the UK, uncooked rice can contain spores a bacterium that can cause food poisoning, and these spores can survive when rice is cooked.

If rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores can grow into bacteria. These bacteria will multiply and may produce toxins (poisons) that cause vomiting or diarrhoea.

The longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that the bacteria or toxins could make the rice unsafe to eat.

To reduce the risk of food poisoning, the NHS recommends:

1. Serving rice as soon as it’s been cooked

2. Cooling rice as quickly as possible if you’re not going to eat it immediately

3. Keeping it in the fridge for no more than one day until reheating

4. Making sure the rice is piping hot when you do reheat

5. Don’t reheat more than once

This article originally appeared in The Sun and has been republished here with permission.