Thinking about the resistant starch issue. When rice is heated and cooled, it has it. Potatoes, when heated and cooled, have it,” “it” being resistant starch. “Green plantains have it, but if one fries up the plantains, then cools them, will they have resistant starch, too? I’m curious about the mechanism. Does the heat render the starch inactive, but reconfigures on cooling? My family loves the fried plantains, but I will have a hard time getting them to eat green ones with no frying.

Laura Schoenfeld:  As far as resistant starch is concerned, I’m not 100 percent sure about if a food already has resistant starch in it, whether or not that gets affected by cooking, like if it gets more active than it would be normally. What I will say is that with the cooked-and-cooled starches like rice and potatoes, if you reheat those after they’ve been cooked and cooled, that does not damage the resistant starch. That resistant starch is still there even if you reheat those foods. My assumption, based on that, would be that the heat of cooking something like a green plantain is not going to render the starch inactive. I don’t believe that green plantains are really meant to be eaten without being cooked, so I wouldn’t actually recommend that. That could cause some significant GI distress. It doesn’t even sound very appealing as far as the flavor is concerned. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to eat a green plantain without cooking it, but I wouldn’t do something that is not really culinarily appropriate just because you think you’re going to improve the nutritional value of it, and I don’t believe that the heat is going to damage that resistant starch, so feel free to cook plantains. I wouldn’t worry about it too much because there are other benefits of eating plantains besides the resistant starch, but that resistant starch should be available even if the food is cooked. Hopefully that answers that question. Feel free to enjoy those fried green plantains!