TikTok is a great place to learn about and share cool little life hacks, however, not everything you there can be trusted. Lately, a weight loss hack involving rice has gone viral on the platform, but what is this rice hack, and is there any truth to it?
What is the rice hack?
According to the peeps on TikTok, the best way to lose a substantial amount of weight is to drink rice water. After boiling your rice and straining it, you want to keep that water rather than pouring it away. Or, alternatively, you can just soak your rice in water without boiling it (there are plenty of videos online for how to make rice water).
Anyways, consuming this rice water regularly will allegedly help you lose a lot of weight if the videos on TikTok are to be believed.
Is the rice hack real?
Let’s get this out of the way: no.
Drinking rice water will not help you lose weight, there are no proven benefits, it’s just a grosser tasting alternative to regular old plain water.
In fact, drinking an excess of rice water could actually be bad for you due to its arsenic content according to Healthline, (although it is apparently good for your skin and hair). TikTok hacks like these are always risky, sometimes they can be genuine good advice, and other times, (like now) they are not.
Where did the rice hack rumor come from?
Most of the videos on TikTok talking about the rice hack point to an interview with Jennifer Lopez from 2008 in which she supposedly claims she drinks rice water regularly. The video has been edited for some reason; originally she was talking about normal water.
Anyway, this one edited clip has been enough to convince many, who have made their own videos about it, and like a messed up game of telephone, the whole thing has gotten out of hand.
So the takeaway is this: drink regular water, don’t believe everything you see online, and if you really need to find something healthy to do with all that rice water, apply it to your skin and hair instead.