Eating black rice (Oryza sativa L.) can reduce the amount of cholesterol your body absorbs. That was the main finding of a paper published ahead of print on the website of the Food and Function journal.
The researchers took three types of extracts from black rice: aqueous, ethanol and macroporous resin based and determined that all of them were able to lower cholesterol uptake by “inhibiting pancreatic lipase, decreasing the micellar cholesterol solubility, and suppressing cholesterol uptake in Caco-2 cells”. Caco-2 cells are a cell line derived from the colon and developed for cancer research.
After attributing this effect to anthocyanins, the scientists studied two: cyanidin-3-glucoside (the most abundant anthocyanin found in nature and in black rice) and peonidin-3-glucoside (also found in black rice) to see how they affected the solubility of cholesterol. Both of them reduced the solubility in a dose dependent manner.
Another publication in the Journal of Functional Foods earlier this month found that black rice bran had a protective effect against carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury in mice.
I know what I’ll be having for dinner tonight.
Click here to read the paper about cholesterol
Click here to read the paper about carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury