“Cooking rice by repeatedly flushing it through with fresh hot water can remove much of the grain’s stored arsenic,” says the journal Nature, citing newly published research on how to reduce levels of arsenic is one of the world’s staple foods. Arsenic occurs naturally in water and soil. Rice picks up more arsenic than other grains. Scientists tried a variety of ways to flush arsenic out of rice, such as cooking it in more water than usual. In one experiment, they tried cooking rice in a coffee percolator, so the cooking water dripped out of the rice; the approach removed half of the arsenic. A more elaborate device that condensed steam into a new supply of cooking water removed as much as 85 percent of the arsenic.
Researcher Andrew Meharg, of Queens University Belfast, said the coffeemaker was used to illustrate the principle; he doesn’t expect people to actually cook rice with it. “He sees the research as a proof of concept that could feed the development of simple, inexpensive rice cookers that lower arsenic concentrations,” said Nature.