Good day, Mr. Jelínek,

I use tapioca starch for thickening or make pudding for my son with tapioca pearls, believing it is a starch beneficial for the intestines. The internet says it contains resistant starch, while some sources claim it does not due to processing. So, is it more suitable to use potato starch if I want to support intestinal bacteria? And is it true that cooking oats, rice, or potatoes and letting them cool down before consuming them cold increases the intake of resistant starch? The ZOF application does not calculate this for me, so is it more certain to use potato starch or juice from raw potatoes?

Thank you for your response.

Tapioca starch contains a minimal amount of resistant starch due to the technological processing of the raw material. If you are targeting the prebiotic effect of the diet, use either potato starch (the most advantageous is pressed potato juice) or focus on the complexity in choosing fiber-rich foods.

Heat treatment changes the structure of starch; after cooling the food, the content of resistant starch is always higher. In this respect, it is more advantageous to consume heat-treated foods cold, but in practice, this rule is applied very rarely. For this reason, we did not include the function of calculating resistant starch in relation to heat treatment of food in the ZOF application, as it does not have broader practical application.

Themes:  Intestines   Tapioca starch   Resistant starch   Potato starch