A limit for chatGPT: Rice cooking

Rice is a great food, but only when cooked properly and consumed as a part of a balanced diet, in contrast to consumed daily with improper cooking, because

High levels of arsenic in food have been linked to different types of cancer, and other health problems.

— Scientific American

1. chatGPT missled me

“What is a good way to cook rice?” — I asked chatGPT today (March 25th, 2023). It answered:

There are several good ways to cook rice, but here is a simple method that works well for most types of rice:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of rice
• 2 cups of water
• Pinch of salt (optional)

Instructions:

1. Rinse the rice in a fine-mesh strainer under running water to remove excess starch and any debris.
2. In a medium-sized pot with a tight-fitting lid, combine the rinsed rice, water, and salt (if using). Bring to a boil over high heat.
3. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot with the lid, and let the rice simmer for 18-20 minutes (for white rice) or 40-45 minutes (for brown rice). Avoid lifting the lid during this time, as it can release steam and affect the cooking process.
4. After the cooking time is up, turn off the heat and let the rice sit, covered, for 5-10 minutes. This allows the rice to absorb any remaining water and become fluffy.
5. Fluff the rice with a fork and serve.

Note: The ratio of rice to water may vary slightly depending on the type of rice you use. Always follow the package instructions or adjust the ratio based on your experience with a particular type of rice.

“Is it advisable to cook rice twice?” — I asked it today, too. It answered:

Cooking rice twice is not generally necessary, and it can actually make the rice less healthy and less flavorful. When you cook rice, it absorbs water and expands, becoming soft and fluffy. If you cook it twice, it may become overcooked and mushy, losing its texture and flavor.

If you have leftover rice that you want to reheat, it is perfectly fine to do so. However, it’s important to reheat it properly to avoid the growth of harmful bacteria. Make sure to store the leftover rice in an airtight container in the refrigerator within 2 hours of cooking, and reheat it thoroughly to an internal temperature of at least 165°F (74°C) before eating.

In summary, cooking rice twice is not necessary and may result in overcooked, mushy rice. Instead, it’s better to cook rice once and store leftovers properly for later reheating.

So, it told me to cook rice in a potentially dangerous way. It did not warn me about proper consumption practice, an did not show me a non-dangerous way to cook rice.

2. Searched google to get to the truth

Being a knowledge sponge, i’m one of the people who had in the back of their minds that rice has a very serious health hazard, arsenic, which adds up in the body, so it’s very bad if not properly prepared rice is often consumed. This is why rice needs to be pre boiled and drained, and then cooked through.

So, i searched Google for credible sources on the topic. Note: Among the multiple results, i picked the most credible ones (i didn’t bother to open low-credible websites).

fda.gov says:

…cooking rice similar to how pasta is cooked can reduce 40 to 60 percent of the inorganic arsenic content…

A study published at nih.gov says:

Excess water cooking reduces average inorganic As by 40% from long grain polished, 60% from parboiled and 50% from brown rice. 

UK’s Food Standards Agency concludes:

It was found here that cooking rice in a large volume of water (6:1 water:rice) had the greatest effect with regards to lowering arsenic levels in cooked rice. Specifically, it preferentially reduced the inorganic arsenic content by 45% of that in the raw rice, when combined with rinse washing. It is recommended that to reduce total and inorganic arsenic content of rice that rice is rinse washed and cooked in a 6:1 water to rice ration.”

University of Sheffield says:

The PBA method involves parboiling the rice in pre-boiled water for five minutes before draining and refreshing the water, then cooking it on a lower heat to absorb all the water.

3. chatGPT tricked me, but it “knows” the truth

“How to decrease arsenic in cooked rice?” — i asked directly to see what chatGPT will say. The response was OK:

Arsenic is a naturally occurring element that can be found in some types of rice. Consuming high levels of arsenic over a long period of time may increase the risk of certain health problems. However, there are several ways to decrease arsenic levels in cooked rice:

1. Rinse the rice before cooking: Rinsing the rice under running water can help remove some of the surface starch and reduce the arsenic content.
2. Cook rice in a larger amount of water: Cooking rice in excess water and then draining the excess water can help reduce the arsenic levels by up to 57%, according to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health.
3. Choose rice wisely: Different types of rice contain varying levels of arsenic, and some rice varieties are known to have lower levels than others. Basmati rice from India, Pakistan, and California, for example, is typically lower in arsenic than other varieties.
4. Soak the rice before cooking: Soaking rice in water for at least 30 minutes before cooking can help reduce the arsenic levels. This is because some of the arsenic is absorbed by the water and then discarded.
5. Consider using alternative grains: Alternatives such as quinoa, bulgur, couscous, or barley are good options that don’t contain arsenic.

It’s important to note that while these methods can help reduce arsenic levels in rice, they may not eliminate it completely. Therefore, it’s still important to consume rice in moderation and as part of a varied diet.

The proper way of cooking rice is stated only after i asked about it, and chatGPT did not even tell me that this is a best practice recommendation, as if it’s not very important if rice is properly cooked or not.

So, it’s safe to say that — at the moment — chatGPT is very, very far from offering best practices for anything.

4. Old-fashioned practices remain best practice

chatGPT is a good tool to get a some idea on the subject, a wide position on the topic, like a general search tool which condenses everything it knows into an easily readable result.

It would be a big mistake to stop using search engines. Even though their results have their own deficits (too many results, credible and incredible results are indistinguishable by order of appearance, paid websites appear higher, leaving an impression of being more credible), old-fashioned search gives us access to direct sources, who’se credibility we can easily check, so we can choose which ones to access.

What chatGPT does is give us a chewed up result from many sources without a credibility measure. The credibility of it’s answers is not satisfactory at the moment.

5. chatGPT’s professional use

Firstly, chatGPT is a context generating engine, so it will be excellent at creating interesting texts. You want to be a writer? Try it. You’ll be discovered by others that it’s not you, but the machine, who the real writer is, but hey, what you’ve got to lose, except your already rock-bottom credibility (since you’re a fraud)?

If you are a marketing expert for a company, and you don’t care much about originality of the text, you might get excellent help from chatGPT. This may be one of the areas where it will be most used in the future.

Other ways to put chatGPT to good use is automated order taking, and first-line responses towards unsatisfied customers, but if a customer is still unsatisfied, a human will have to address the issue, again.

It would be extremely imprudent and inefficient for a computer programmer to use chatGPT without accessing all the websites that are needed for daily work, where documentation is cited directly for the computer language used, specific methods, implementation guides (for Tailwind, for example), and specific best practices. Programming is, simply, too deep and too wide of a topic, where everything matters.

It would be extremely imprudent for any other paid specialist who uses chatGPT to rely only on chatGPT for delivering paid-for services. The specialist could use chatGPT as a part of his or her tools to do the job, but he or she remains the ultimate arbiter who should check for result quality, make modifications, organise the multitude of atomised responses on a lot of the different needs of the client in order to paint the whole picture of the product, to deliver a complete, finished service… and to advise with the client about his own idea’s suitability and future modifications, of course.

So, chatGPT is a good, complementary engine that can be used along the standard ways to get to results by using search engines, human text writing, or any human-involved service, really. Without the core that has to exist, using only chatGPT would be disastrous for a business that already delivers a service or product.

6. Here’s my cooked rice that tasted very good

I put 100 grams of uncooked rice into ten times its amount of boiling water (1 kg).

I turned the heat off, gave it a good stir, let it rest for about half an hour.

The rice absorbed 80 g of water, and after draining, it weighted 180 g.

After that, i put 220 g of fresh water in a pot together with this half-cooked rice, some salt and spices, and simmered it on low heat until all the water was absorbed.

The rice tasted good, not raw, not overcooked. In total, around 400 g of edible rice was made from 100 g of raw, uncooked rice. I think that 100 g of water more would have been even better for taste. So, it’s 1:3, at least, 1:4 would be even better in my opinion. chatGPT’s recipe was wrong for certain, because it wrote 1 cup rice and 2 cups of water, which is 1:2. With so little water, the rice would have been too dry.

And, yes, the lid on the pot was closed, so most of it was absorbed, and just a small bit had to have evaporated, an insignificant amount, but never more than 100 g, since it was slow cooked with the lid on.

Be careful not to scorch the rice, like i did (the unscorched part that i ate did not take any burnt taste, at all).

To summarize: chatGPT’s answer was disappointing, since the recipe was wrong, the cooking procedure was faulty, and it didn’t warn me about the very real potential dangers of improper cooking and consummation of rice.