Colon cleansing has become a popular but unproven alternative health practice to "clean out" your intestines, reduce fatigue, renew your energy and reduce your risk of developing cancer or other diseases. Alternative practitioners may recommend a diet of raw foods, including raw rice, to empty the colon effectively. Because brown rice contains more fiber and nutrients, most alternative websites recommend it over white rice. High-fiber foods can help relieve constipation, and uncooked rice contains more undigestible fiber than cooked rice. Eating uncooked rice can have potentially harmful side effects.
Digestibility
Raw rice is less digestible and therefore supplies fewer nutrients to your body than cooked rice, but the point of a colon cleanse isn't to add nutrients but to empty the colon. Cooked starch, which includes rice, is two to 12 times more digestible than raw starch, according to the website Beyond Vegetarianism. Protein digestibility increases from 25 to 65 percent when you cook rice. Less digestible raw rice passes through the digestive tract intact. The health benefits of this have not been established.
Fiber
A cup of brown rice contains around 6.5 g of fiber, far below the daily recommended amount of 20 g. Some websites advocating raw rice for colon cleanses also recommend eating raw vegetables, which will increase your dietary fiber content. Fiber helps prevent constipation by moving waste products through the intestines.
Risks
Raw rice may contain bacteria called bacillus cereus. If you soak raw rice and leave it out for more than four hours, you may activate the spores, which then germinate and multiply, causing a gastrointestinal infection characterized by nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping or diarrhea.
Considerations
Colon cleansing hype has no scientific basis, NYU Langone Medical Center explains. Cells in your colon replace themselves every three days. If you're constipated, increasing your fiber intake through fruits and vegetables will accomplish the same results as a raw rice colon cleanse and without the risk of bacterial infection.
References
- NYU Langone Medical Center; Colon Cleansing: Don't Be Misled By the Claims; December 2010
- ABC Health and Wellbeing; Will Cooked Rice Give You Food Poisoning If It's Not Stored in the Fridge?; Cathy Moir; January 2009
- Beyond Vegetarianism: Does Cooked Food Contain Less Nutrition?
- Harvard School of Public Health: Fiber: Start Roughing It!
- United States Department of Agriculture: Rice, Brown, Long-Grain, Raw
- How to Detox Safely: Brown Rice: A Health and Detox Staple
Member Comments