[2] It is consumed in eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha (Pakhala), Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Tripura and in the country of Bangladesh.

Anthropologist Tapan Kumar Sanyal, argues that proto-Australoid people in parts of South Asia resorted to eating the panta bhat because they cooked once a day, in the evening.

[7] The soaked rice is usually eaten in the morning with salt, lime, chili (either raw or roasted) and onions (sliced or whole) mostly for flavor.

[8][9] Panta bhat is often served with fried fish or vegetable curry or flattened rice (chira), dried cane or palm molasses (jaggery or guda) and milk curd (doi).

[11] Panta bhat or poita bhat is often garnished with mustard oil, onion, chilli, pickle, and served with shutki mach (dried fish), machher jhol (fish curry), especially shorshe Ilish (ilish cooked with mustard seeds), aloo bhorta or aloo pitika (mashed potato), begun bhorta (mashed brinjal) and other bhorta or pitika (mashed food).

Panta bhat is especially popular in rural areas,[14][15] generally served with salt, raw onion and green chili.

[33] In Assam, offering dudh panta (milk with stale water-soaked rice) is a part of the marital ritual.

[34] Panta bhat is also popular among slum-dwellers of Dhaka because it can be easily eaten only with salt or with an onion or a fried or green chili, without any other requirement.

[35] Most restaurants on NH34, which runs through Krishnanagar, Nadia, serve panta bhat in summer along with kasundi, mustard oil, kaffir lime, green chili, sliced onion, aloo chokha, fried red chili, Poppy seed balls, aloo jhuri bhaja, mango chutney, sour curd, and sweet paan.

"no mother-in-law, no sister-in-law, whom do I fear/ shall eat watered rice first then clean the room"), maga bhat tay basi ar panta(lit.

"got rice begging, ask not whether stale or watered"), ki katha bolbo sai/panta bhate tak dai (lit.

"what do I say, sour curd on watered rice), panta bhate noon jote na/begun poday ghee (lit.

[39] In a study conducted by agricultural biotechnology department of the Assam Agricultural University it was concluded that cooked rice had an element that prevented the availability of minerals like iron, potassium, sodium and calcium in high quantities, and the breakdown of the nutritional inhibitor by the lactic acid bacteria increased the mineral content manifolds.

"[40] According to another study (ILSI 1998), fermentation improves the bioavailability of minerals such as iron and zinc as a result of phytic acid hydrolysis, and increases the content of riboflavin and vitamin B.

[44] Despite its nutritional and remedial values, panta bhat is often contaminated, with almost 90% of the samples containing fecal coliforms with a median count of 3.9 log cfu/ml.