Biology Extended Essay M20 A

Personal Engagement

There has been an increasing number of teenagers in Korea, including myself, who are becoming obsessed with losing weight due to misrepresentation of ideal body images in the television. Due to this overwhelming desire to lose weight, these teenagers promote the idea of fasting as a means to consume less calories, refraining from having a well-balanced diet, which as a result, causes some form of malnutrition. What was unknown to them, and to me, was the fact that eating cooled rice would give similar results by resulting in less glycosidic index without the underlying health issues of extreme dieting. I first encountered this idea as a popular local myth in the Philippines. As I researched, I realized that there was scientific background to the myth and was compelled to investigate how different cooling times of Jasponica Oryza sativa “common rice variant” would affect its digestibility and hence, result in less calories absorbed and a lower glycemic index.

I thought that this was very significant especially to me since I live in a country where rice is a staple food eaten at least two times a day. Moreover, this research would give people a more concrete relationship between calories and cooling times of rice, and would also assist the dietician sector, helping them achieve a direct approach to help those people who want to cut down on their calories. It would also help those people who want to achieve the opposite effects of gaining weight by advising them when to eat rice. More importantly, this has a medical application in improving diet plans for type II diabetic people in decreasing blood glucose levels…