Legumes
The humble bean – so unassuming, so staid compared to flamboyant fruit or vibrant veg. Quietly saving lives for millennia.
A diet rich in beans has been shown to:
Help prevent cognitive decline in the elderly
Lower blood pressure and cholesterol
Promote blood sugar balance and reduce the risk for diabetes
Cut your risk of both colon cancer and heart attack in half
Promote weight loss
In a large cross-country study of dietary intake, legumes were shown to be the one and ONLY food to increase longevity.
Yes, you heard that right. Regularly eating beans will make you live longer!
And, your gut bugs love them. They are one of the preferred foods of our good gut microbes, who then repay us with all those terrific postbiotic benefits.
www.thewell-nourishedbrain.com/blog/prebiotics-probiotics-and-postbiotics
But… I can’t tolerate beans!
If you have trouble with beans, you may be lacking the enzyme to digest them. In which case, Beano might be helpful. What is even more likely, though, is that you lack a healthy population of good gut bugs to break down the oligosaccharides (nondigestible fermentable carbohydrates) in the beans in your large intestine. If this is the case (and it likely is), what you need to do is to grow those little babies in your gut rainforest.
How do you do this? Start small and work your way up.
Start with the smallest dose that you can tolerate (it may only be a TBS) and eat this amount daily. Once you are tolerating this well, slowly increase your bean consumption until you are at 1/2 a cup a day or more. As you do, the microbes in your gut will quickly multiply, and you will be able to tolerate increasingly larger amounts without GI upheaval. This growth of good gut microbes happens at a remarkably rapid rate, so the process shouldn’t take long. The key is consistency.
The goal is to eat at least a ½ cup of beans EVERY SINGLE DAY. 1 cup is even better for optimal health.
How on earth would I eat that many beans?
Hummus! Eat it on everything. Store bought is fine.
Top salads with garbanzos. Roast them for snacks or as an alternative to croutons.
Add red lentils to any soup.
Eat steamed edamame for snacks.
Tofu! Tofu! Tofu!
Use silken tofu to make delicious sauces like cilantro crema:
www.thewell-nourishedbrain.com/blog/oil-free-cilantro-cremaMake black bean brownies or sneaky peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (shown below):
www.thewell-nourishedbrain.com/blog/black-bean-brownies
www.thewell-nourishedbrain.com/blog/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies
When cooking a meal, I encourage you to think of how you might sneak in a few beans. Your good gut bugs will rejoice, and you will be one step closer to reaching your health goals.
🌱💕