Abstract:The glycemic index (GI) is an effective indicator of the postprandial glycemic response, and is of great importance for guiding the dietary choices of individuals with obesity or diabetes. Rice is the staple food of more than half of the world's population. Consumption of a low GI rice diet to achieve a low and stable postprandial glucose response is a cost-effective means of controlling the blood glucose levels. In vitro digestion simulates the physiological conditions present during digestion. Compared to in vivo digestion experiments, in vitro digestion allows us to study the GI characteristics of food in a rapid, inexpensive, and reproducible manner. This paper summarizes the research progress on the concept of rice GI, the methods used for measuring rice GI, the digestion models used for evaluating the digestibility of rice starch, and the interactions between rice starch granules and non-starch components (intrinsic characteristics) and processing factors (external factors). It is necessary to further study the genetics of resistant starch, establish standardized cooking processes, conditions, and heat-moisture treatment processes, and strategies for delaying or inhibiting starch retrogradation to enable the acquisition of rice with low digestibility. As the current in vitro digestion model can only estimate the rice GI, future research should be targeted at continuously improving this model to enable it to closely simulate in vivo digestion.
