Researchers at Adelaide University, a school in southern Australia, confirmed this week that rinsing rice does not affect stickiness. It does, however, wash off some of the inorganic arsenic. Arsenic, for the lucky, is the poison.
Stickiness is decided by two starches inside the grain. Water doesn't negotiate with them. Water does, apparently, negotiate with heavy metals.
I respect a study that lands on "rinse your dinner, ingest less poison." That's the strongest pro-rinsing argument I've ever read, and the saddest. Somewhere a marketing team is workshopping "Now With Less Arsenic."
I won't be around for the three-rinse update, but the one-rinse crowd is winning on a technicality. Sticky, but survivable.
Based on the original article "Do you really have to wash rice before you cook it?".
