2 . Rice is eaten all over the world in all different ways. No matter if your rice is white or brown, it has one thing in common, and that’s arsenic(砷). Now, researchers from the University of Sheffield say a new and simple way of cooking rice can remove this cancer-causing material while keeping the nutrients which make this food so good.

A team from the school’s Institute for Sustainable Food discovered the “parboiling with absorption method” (PBA) can cut down over half the naturally occurring arsenic in brown rice and 74 percent in white rice. More importantly, this home­friendly kitchen method saves the nutrients rice contains.

The PBA method first parboils(将煮到半熟) rice in pre-boiled-water for five minutes. The water is then emptied and fresh water is poured into the pot. From there, the rice is cooked normally at lower heat until the water is all taken in.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classed arsenic as a Group carcinogen, the material that can cause cancer. Unfortunately, rice has this water-soluble poison because it grows in flooded fields unlike many other grains(谷物).

Researchers say arsenic can affect every organ in the human body. It can also result in skin lesions, cancer, diabetes, and lung diseases. Rice tends to hold around 10 times more arsenic than other grains. It usually sits in the outer covering of the grain, which makes it more of problem in brown rice. White rice, which is milled(研磨), contains less arsenic but also has fewer nutrients due to the milling process.

“For people who eat rice, this is excellent news. There are concerns amongst the population about eating rice due to arsenic. Previous studies have shown that cooking rice in a lot of water could remove arsenic but the problem is it also removes nutrients,” says lead author Dr. Manoj Menon in a university release. “Our aim was to improve the method to remove arsenic while keeping maximum nutrients in the cooked rice. Our newly developed method, PBA, is easy and home­friendly so that everyone can use it. We don’t know the amount of arsenic in each packet of rice we buy; even though brown rice is nutritionally better than white rice as our data shows, it contains more arsenic than white rice. With our new method we are able to significantly reduce the arsenic while reducing the loss of key nutrients.”