Did not know that pilaf and fried rice actually have fewer calories!

Yes, but it's still carbs, so tread lightly. 

There is preliminary evidence that rice cooked with fat and then cooled is more beloved by the microbiome!

http://time.com/3754097/rice-calories-starch/

Also this cooking hack works on potatoes! Boil potatoes and then refrigerate them, then cook them the next day as hash browns or home fries (grated or cubed then sauteed) -- they will have fewer calories and carbs than when they started.

http://time.com/3734679/potato-healthy/

Thank you for sharing that food hack! Sweet! And beloved by the Microbiome!

Good for our diets:

http://pandawhale.com/post/69808/effects-of-dietary-composition-on-energy-expenditure-during-weight-loss-maintenance

You must try this!

Oh I see... resistant starch is a type of FIBER. So it has a lot of the health benefits of fiber:

http://www.prevention.com/food/healthy-eating-tips/resistant-starch-natural-fat-burner

So... Cook beans, rice, and/or potatoes with fat like butter, then let cool.

Then eat without reheating?

Keep it cool In cooked starchy foods, resistant starch is created during cooling. Cooking triggers starch to absorb water and swell, and as it slowly cools, portions of the starch become crystallized into the form that resists digestion. Cooling either at room temperature or in the refrigerator will raise resistant starch levels. Just don't reheat. That breaks up the crystals, causing resistant starch levels to plummet.

I think the upshot of these articles is that people knew about resistant starch for a long time, it forms during cooling of carbs, but it was not that practical because who wants to eat cold rice and beans and potatoes without reheating? The research on this page seems to be that if you cook rice WITH FAT and then cool it, the fat somehow "sets" the starch on cooling so that you can reheat it. Unclear whether the same mechanisms work with potatoes or beans, I know that beans in particular have very long-chain carbs which might not be as easy for fats to alter.

Troutgirl, that means your recommendation to boil potatoes and then fry them the next day is totally off. If this works at all with potatoes, you need to fry, cool, and reheat.

I wonder how we can verify that this works at all.

Resistant starch seems cutting edge. I mean, this is the first I've heard of it.

Halibutboy, all your logic makes sense to me. 

It seems so odd (with historical perspective) to *remove* calories from rice. Kind of like treating gasoline to lower your mpg. "Look, I can fill up my tank and only have to drive 30 miles to empty it!"

Haha, good analogy except for the fact that gasoline doesn't make our cars fat. :)

So now we can eat baby panda rice balls!

http://pandawhale.com/post/27491/baby-pandas-made-of-rice-invade-a-plate-of-curry

very interesting.  my first thought was the same as joseph's: funny that we are trying to take the energy out of our food because we like eating more than we need!  but then again, we like eating more than we need!!

it also reminds me of french fries.  a fancy chef once told me that the secret to his masterful french fries was to chop the potatoes and then freeze them.  the freezing did something to make them more delicious when fried later.  tricks of the trade!

We enjoy the deliciousness! We just don't want the carbs.

Resistant starch is an appealing concept. 

This is a good, basic resistant-starch explainer:  http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-resistant-starch

Thanks CJ. This is a good explanation:

While most starches are broken down by enzymes in our small intestine into sugar, which is then absorbed into the blood, we can’t fully absorb all kinds of starch.

Some starch — known as resistant starch (RS) — isn’t fully absorbed in the small intestine. Instead, RS makes its way to the large intestine (colon), where intestinal bacteria ferment it.

RS is similar to fiber (see All About Fiber), although nutrition labels rarely take RS into account.

...

RS is found in starchy plant foods such as:

• beans/legumes
• starchy fruits and vegetables (such as bananas)
• whole grains
• some types of cooked then cooled foods (such as potatoes and rice)

The longer and hotter a starch is cooked, the less RS it tends to have — except for the cooked then cooled foods.