> 'Wait 12 hours' might sound simple, but it's not very practical...

Its quite practical in a place where refrigerators are available. I suspect many of the places where rice is a staple food and transition from bare subsistence to a more robust living standard in a historically short period of time has resulted in an upswing of obesity as eating habits adapted to up and down cycles don't work as well with stronger and longer up cycles probably see a substantial overlap between the population this would hope to serve and the population for which refrigerating prepared food for 12 hours before consuming isn't a completely unrealistic prep step, even if its not something you'd do at home every meal.

And even to the extent it is, part of what they've said is that they are looking into how this could be developed into a pre-consumer process.

It works well with rice cookers with delay timers (which are as cheap as $35). You prepare the rice the night before and put it in the rice cooker, then set the delay timer to right before you wake up. Once you wake up, put the cooked rice into a container and into the fridge; when you return home it's done.

You can cycle this process every 12 hours by having new rice on a delay when you leave for work, so it's cooked when you return home and you can put that in the fridge for the morning or lunch. It may not be 12 hours exactly but it's close. Or just save big batches.

This is especially true in Asian cultures where (as cited) rice is such a central part of the cuisine. The way that foods are prepared are tied often to tradition, family history, etc. Shifting even small habits is a huge undertaking:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/an-iron-...