Can Badly Cooked Rice Cause Food Poisoning?

Recent expert advice indicates that badly cooked rice can cause food poisoning – the tests found traces of arsenic – a substance lethal to humans potentially causing heart disease diabetes and cancer

The problem seems to emanate from the way the rice is grown- using pesticides and other chemicals which can be released in harmful doses on cooking- although a small amount of arsenic occurs naturally in rice anyway.

The safest way to cook the rice seems to be by adding a lot more water than most of us do currently. It appears that if you add five times the ratio of water to the rice and then wash off the excess water about half of the arsenic levels result

And an even safer way to prepare the rice is to leave the rice soaking overnight in cold water- which results in 80% of the toxins being removed.

Apart from domestic cooking this advice is something that restaurant owners need to take on board to ensure that the product offered to diners is as safe as possible