I’ve spent enough time around food—eating it, selling it, trying to manage my weight with it—to know that the stories we tell about it aren’t always complete. Take white rice or pasta. The usual line: it spikes blood sugar, burns fast, leaves you tired. In many cases, true.

But context matters. Especially temperature.

When cooked starches like rice or pasta are cooled, some of the carbohydrates reorganize into resistant starch. It’s not broken down the same way. Blood sugar stays more stable. Digestion slows. The gut microbiome gets fed. And you feel it—more steady energy, less of the crash.

This isn’t a fringe theory. It’s well-studied. And at Zina’s, we see it play out daily. Our Green Goddess Pasta Salad, Couscous Salad, and Penne with Spinach & Feta are chilled after cooking. They’re not just convenient. They’re metabolically different from a steaming plate of the same ingredients.

That shift matters to people managing weight, energy, or glucose. It also reframes what we consider healthy.

It's not just the ingredients. It’s the process.

You don’t need new food rules. Just slight adjustments. Eat that pasta cold. Or reheat it gently—don’t scorch it. Keep the structure intact.

No marketing spin here. Just quiet value in something we’ve been doing for years, without calling it out.

Let the science catch up to tradition. It usually does.