ProteinAholic by Garth Davis, M.D.
I rely heavily on the legume, or bean family. Beans do have lots of protein, but I eat them because they are very high in fiber, loaded with great starch, filled with vitamins, and especially rich in minerals like magnesium and even iron.
Davis M.D., Garth; Jacobson, Howard. Proteinaholic (p. 277). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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I am sure you have heard a Paleo follower tell you not to eat beans because they contain chemicals called lectins that can poison you. Like most Paleo beliefs, this is a giant mistake built around a kernel of truth. Lectins are part of a bean’s defense system, deterring animals from eating them before they get a chance to grow into plants. Luckily for us, lectins are easily inactivated by soaking the beans in water or cooking them (Cuadrado 2002).
One of the great things about black beans is their versatility. For instance, black beans can easily be consumed as a soup or as “refried beans.”
Vegan Pressure Cooking by JL Fields
“I bought my first pressure so that I could make beans in minutes. The mighty legume is a tremendous source of protein in a vegan diet and, frankly, I was tired of buying all of those cans of beans. What keeps most people from making beans from scratch is one thing: time. The pressure cooker removes that obstacle.
Many people are drawn to using a pressure cooker to avoid soaking beans (I was), but soaking does have a purpose: It makes beans more digestible and, even in the pressure cooker, they cook more quickly. In my personal experience, they also cook more evenly and, frankly, taste better. If you don’t want to soak beans overnight—or you forget to—you can cook unsoaked, dried beans. The cooking time is longer than soaked but still significantly shorter than the conventional stove top method.”
LENTILS
Lentils cook up quickly and are a great staple in the vegan kitchen. These Italian-flavored lentils are great in a lettuce salad tossed with sundried tomatoes and green olives or added to marinara for a meatier pasta sauce.
1 cup (200 g) dried brown lentils, rinsed and drained (no need to soak)
1 cup (235 ml) vegetable broth
1 cup (235 ml) water
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning (or a blend of oregano, basil, marjoram, and parsley)
Add all the ingredients to the pressure cooker.
Stir to combine.
Cover and bring to pressure.
Cook at high pressure for 8 to 10 minutes. Use a quick release.
Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD
Whole grain pastas and bean pastas, found in health-food stores, are better choices than those made from white flour.
Contrary to claims of many health-food and supplement enthusiasts, the produce grown in this country is nutrient-rich and high in trace minerals, especially beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. American-produced grains, however, do not have the mineral density of vegetables. Grains and animal-feed crops grown in the southeastern states are the most deficient, but even in those states only a small percentage of crops are shown to be deficient in minerals.
The food pyramid endorses a level of animal-food consumption that causes the diseases that kill us: heart attacks and cancer. Foods also are grouped in ways that don’t make sense. Meat and beans are in the same food group because they are considered protein-rich foods. Nuts and seeds are not even shown. However, while nuts, seeds, and beans have been shown to reduce cholesterol levels and heart disease risk, meat is linked to increased risk.
Based on an exhaustive look at research data from around the world over the past fifteen years, my recommendation is that your diet should contain over 90 percent of calories from unrefined plant foods. This high percentage of nutrient-dense plant foods in the diet allows us to predict freedom from cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, and excess body weight. Fruits, vegetables, and beans must be the base of your food pyramid; otherwise, you will be in a heap of trouble down the road.
Beans or legumes are among the world’s most perfect foods. They stabilize blood sugar, blunt the desire for sweets, and prevent mid-afternoon cravings. Even a small portion can help you feel full, but in the Six-Week Plan I encourage you to eat at least one full cup daily. Beans contain both insoluble and soluble fiber and are very high in resistant starch.
While the benefits of fiber are well-known, resistant starch is proving to be another highly desirable dietary component. Although it is technically a starch, it acts more like fiber during digestion. Typically, starches found in carbohydrate-rich foods are broken down into glucose during digestion, and the body uses that glucose as energy.
Much like fiber, resistant starch “resists” digestion and passes through the small intestine without being digested. Because of this, some researchers classify resistant starch as a third type of fiber. Beans are the best food source of resistant starch. Overall, the starch in beans is about evenly divided between slowly digested starch and resistant starch, although the amount of resistant starch can vary depending on the type of bean and the preparation method. This means that a significant amount of the carbohydrate calories listed for the beans is not absorbed.
How Not To Die by Michael Greger, MD
ALZHEIMER’S
The good news, as a senior scientist at the Center for Alzheimer’s Research entitled a review article, is that “Alzheimer’s Disease Is Incurable but Preventable.” Diet and lifestyle changes could potentially prevent millions of cases a year. How?
There is an emerging consensus that “what is good for our hearts is also good for our heads,”63 because clogging of the arteries inside of the brain with atherosclerotic plaque is thought to play a pivotal role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
It is not surprising, then, that the dietary centerpiece of the 2014 “Dietary and Lifestyle Guidelines for the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease,” published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, was: “Vegetables, legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), fruits, and whole grains should replace meats and dairy products as primary staples of the diet.”
BEANS, PHYTATES, and CANCER
Of all the wonderful nutrients in beans, why do we credit the phytates with reduced risk? Petri-dish studies have shown that phytates inhibit the growth of virtually all human cancer cells tested so far—including cancers of the colon, breast, cervix, prostate, liver, pancreas, and skin—while leaving normal cells alone.
This is the mark of a good anticancer agent, the ability to discriminate between tumor cells and normal tissue. When you eat whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds, phytates are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and readily taken up by tumor cells. Tumors concentrate these compounds so efficiently that phytate scans can be used to trace the spread of cancer within the body.
BEANS, WEIGHT CONTROL
Many population studies have shown that people who eat significant amounts of legumes (e.g., beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils) tend to weigh less. They also have slimmer waists, less obesity, and lower blood pressure compared to people who don’t eat many legumes.
Eating legumes was shown to be just as effective at slimming waistlines and improving blood sugar control as calorie cutting. The legume group also gained additional benefits in the form of improved cholesterol and insulin regulation. This is encouraging news for overweight individuals at risk for type 2 diabetes. Instead of just eating smaller portions and reducing the quantity of the food they eat, they can also improve the quality of their food by eating legume-rich meals.
Legume consumption is associated with a slimmer waist and lower blood pressure, and randomized trials have shown it can match or beat out calorie cutting for slimming tummy fat as well as improving the regulation of blood sugar, insulin levels, and cholesterol. Beans are packed with fiber, folate, and phytates, which may help reduce the risk of stroke, depression, and colon cancer. The phytoestrogens in soy in particular appear to both help prevent breast cancer and improve breast cancer survival. No wonder the cancer guidelines suggest you should try to fit beans into your meals—and it’s so easy! They can be added to nearly any meal, easily incorporated into snack times, or served as the star attraction. The possibilities are endless.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
The only legumes I have the patience to cook from scratch are lentils. They cook quickly and don’t need to be presoaked. You can just simmer them as you would pasta, in a pot with an abundance of water, for about half an hour. In fact, if you’re making pasta and have the time, why not let some lentils boil in the water for twenty minutes before adding in the pasta? Lentils are great in spaghetti sauce. That’s what I do when I make rice or quinoa: I throw a handful of dried lentils into the rice cooker, and they’re done when the grain is cooked. Mashed and seasoned cooked lentils also make a great veggie dip.
I pack pea soup mix when I travel. It’s lightweight, and I can prepare it in the hotel room coffeemaker.
For more than a decade, soy foods have enjoyed the rare privilege of an “FDA-approved” food-label health claim about soy’s ability to protect against heart disease. A billion-dollar industry, Big Soy has a lot of money to fund research touting the benefits of their bean. But is soy really the top bean, or are other legumes just as powerful?
It turns out that non-soy beans, including lentils, lima beans, navy beans, and pinto beans, drop bad cholesterol levels as effectively as soy protein. One study, for example, found that eating a half a cup a day of cooked pinto beans for two months may drop your cholesterol by nineteen points.
Mostly, I just add beans to whatever I happen to be making. I try to always keep an open can front and center in the fridge as a reminder. We buy black beans by the case. (Black beans appear to have more phenolic phytonutrients than other common legumes, but the best bean is probably whichever one you’ll eat the most of!)
Even if at first they make you gassy, beans are so health promoting that you should experiment with ways to keep them in your diet at all costs. Lentils, split peas, and canned beans tend to produce less gas, and tofu isn’t usually an offender. Repeated soakings of dried beans in water containing a quarter teaspoon of baking soda per gallon and tossing out the cooking water may help if you boil your own beans.
Of the spices that have been tested, cloves, cinnamon, and garlic seem to be the most gas reducing, followed by turmeric (but only if uncooked), pepper, and ginger. If worse comes to worst, there are cheap supplements that contain alpha-galactosidase, an enzyme shown to break up the bean sugars and take the sail out of your wind.
Eat Vegan on $4 a Day by Ellen Jaffe Jones
𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨 𝐨𝐟 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠.
𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐳𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞, 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝟏:𝟒 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫.
𝐋𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐬, 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧, 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝟏:𝟐 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫.
In fact, because this is the same ratio used to cook brown rice and many other whole grains, some people like to cook lentils and grains together to save preparation and cleanup time.
Lentils and split peas are so small that they don’t need to be soaked. Other beans need to be soaked for eight to twelve hours. This can be done overnight, while you are sleeping, or while you are at work.
The Fiber Fueled Cookbook by Will Bulsiewicz, MD, MSCI
PINTO BEANS
Compared to placebo, pinto bean consumption significantly reduced triglyceride and LDL cholesterol levels.
Blood glucose levels were significantly lower in people with diabetes when eating a meal including beans and rice rather than rice alone, even though the number of carbohydrates was the same.
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