Lovely Legumes!

Under appreciated by many, legumes, including beans, chickpeas, split peas and lentils are an excellent source of fibre, plant protein and many essential nutrients including vitamins, such as B1, minerals such as magnesium, phosphorous, potassium and copper, antioxidants and other bio-active compounds.

They are extremely cheap and when looking at nutritional density per penny, pinto beans, lentils, black beans and kidney beans are most favourable.

Beans are associated with:

⬇️body weight

⬇️insulin resistance

⬇️oxidative stress

⬇️heart disease

⬇️LDL cholesterol

⬇️blood pressure

⬆️arterial function

Good to know:

We have an 8% reduction in risk of death for every 2 tbsp daily increase in daily legume intake.

Special proteins in legumes, phytates, reduce matrix metalloproteinates (MMPs) activity, enzymes that allow cancer to tunnel through the surrounding flesh and invade the lymph or blood vessels and then enable it to burrow in and grow somewhere else. Black eyed peas, lentils and fava beans reduce MMP activity by more than 50%, lupin beans, chickpeas and soya beans cut MMP activity by 90%. Soya beans seem particularly effective, even after cooking. In this way legumes reduce the risk of death from cancer.

Adding 5 cups of legumes per week to a diet has been shown to be even better than calorie reduction of 500 calories per day in reducing pre-diabetics risk factors, causing slimmer waistlines, better blood sugar control and reduced risk factors of metabolic syndrome. Eating beans can ameliorate the blood sugar spike from high glycaemic foods and moderate your blood sugar throughout the day and even the next day as the gut bacteria break the beans down and produce compounds like propionate, which are absorbed into our system and slow down gastric emptying, so we don’t get as much of a sugar rush.

In a randomised controlled trial, a cup per day of legumes over a 3 month period, reduced HBA1c from 7.4-6.9 and reduced the heart rate by 3.4 beats per minutes, as much as 50 hours on a treadmill, reducing the risk of death.

1 serving of a combination of beans, split peas, lentils and chickpeas for 8 weeks led to improvements in peripheral artery disease, so improves arterial function.

In a randomised crossover trial of people with raised cholesterol, adding 2 servings a day of legumes cut cholesterol so much that many participants moved below the range for which statin drugs are typically prescribed.

People with Parkinson’s disease fed 1/3 cup of cooked fresh green fava beans or 1/2 cup freshly chopped fava sprouts showed substantial clinical improvement over the following 4 hours, similar to improvements seen in the standard pharmacological combination of L-dopa plus carbidopa. Adding 1 1/2 spoonfuls of roasted soya beans to patients on top of Parkinson medications leads to a significant improvement over drugs alone.

Takeaway:

Eat legumes everyday! Cheap, nutritious, delicious and satiating. A massively underrated food group. Aim for 3 servings a day. 1 serving =1/4 cup of hummus or bean dip, 1/2 cup cooked beans. split peas, lentils, tofu, or tempeh, or 1 cup of fresh peas or sprouted lentils.