We live in Mexico where many types of beans and other legumes have been a staple in the diet for at least 7,000 to 8,000 years since many were originally domesticated in Mexico. Unfortunately, the average per person consumption of cooked legumes has fallen dramatically here from 110 grams a day in the 1980's to just 53g a day now. The decrease is largely due to urbanization and the influence of the ultra-processed SAD (Standard American Diet) much to the detriment of the health of the general population. Ben's point about eating legumes instead of processed red meat and junk foods is spot on.
For people who have trouble (at least initially) digesting beans or other legumes another option is to use garbanzo flour in baking recipes as a substitute for some of the wheat flour. The garbanzo flour adds protein, fiber and nutrients and the finely ground flour is easier to digest than cooked beans. There's no noticeable difference in taste or texture as I found from personal experience baking with it.
Using pea protein powder in smoothies, shakes and baking is another way to add very easy to digest legumes to your diet while boosting protein content.
Dry roasted, lightly salted, soybeans ("soy nuts") and edamame are tasty legume snacks and can be used in place of croutons in salads. Both should be easy to digest for most people.
Loads of great suggestions there, Tom. Am I right in thinking there’s no gluten in chickpea/garbanzo bean flour, so it wouldn’t work for bread? Probably flatbreads though.
It’s sad to hear how the traditional Mexican diet is being supplanted by the dreaded ‘standard American diet.’ You can just imagine executives at the big food conglomerates discussing the vast untapped market in Mexico and strategising on how to expand market share there. Who needs black bean burritos when you can have Pop Tarts instead!
My parents were Italian immigrants. Even though they became fully American in all aspects of their lifestyle, my father built a fixture in the fireplace and all winter long, he would build fires and cook a pot beans in it, because that’s what his parents did “in the old country”.
In addition to the small measured life span improvement, I believe there is an improvement in quality of life, which admittedly is harder to measure, with addition of beans and lentils. I suspect the change in microbiome accompanying regular beans and lentils might contribute to quiet improvements behind the scenes in things such as mitochondrial function and neurochemistry. As we see better research in effects of gut microbiome, perhaps we will see such items quantified.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I think you’re right. I certainly feel much better after eating a meal where the protein came from legumes vs one with lots of meat. I’m not sure how much is physiological and how much is the psychology of being glad you ate something ‘healthy’.
There’s plenty of evidence that a plant heavy diet is linked with a microbiome profile that’s linked to better health. Like you, I think that’s an exciting field that we’ve so far just scratched the surface of.
I'm one of those people who cooks dried chickpeas in her slow cooker, and thus I'm interested in the lectin "controversy." As far as I can tell, it's only kidney beans that should never be cooked this way. I do see many sites misquoting Dr Greger of Nutrition Facts regarding cooking beans in a slow cooker -- he was talking specifically about kidney beans ONLY. Do you have other info to contradict this?
Hi Bette. I’m relying on scientific papers, as hopefully they provide the most reliable information.
The problem is, there’s no comprehensive set of information that I can find. Kidney beans are the notable example of beans that are toxic when raw and need to be boiled before eating. However, other beans have as high or higher levels of lectins.
My best source measured the lectin levels of a wide range of different beans and other vegetables. Kidney beans has 13,200 units, but Lima beans had 26,500 and black beans had 26,400. Other beans with high levels were pinto beans (13,600), white beans, rashti beans and borlotti (13,300).
There are different types of lectins, and some may be more toxic than others, but I think it’s safe to assume that all of these should be boiled before going into the slow cooker.
When I lived in Canada I often made chili in a slow cooker with kidney beans. I never boiled them in a pot first because the "high" setting on a slow cooker boils the beans. I never had any negative side effects from eating any of the many types of beans I cooked in a slow cooker (using the high temperature setting) without boiling them first.
Hi Tom. I’m assuming you mean dried beans rather than canned beans. Canned beans are already cooked, so no need to worry about lectins there.
The high setting on my slow cooker boils the food, too, though the low setting doesn’t. I guess public bodies have to be conservative in their recommendations.
I always used dry beans and still do because nearly all canned foods use a harmful lining material inside the cans consisting of an epoxy resin made with Bisphenol A (BPA) which is a known endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen and interferes with your body's natural hormone systems. Studies connect exposure to BPA with reproductive issues, metabolic changes, and elevated risks for certain chronic illnesses. The BPA slowly migrates from the resin lining directly into the food, particularly with high-acid content foods like tomatoes. If you eat canned foods for 50+ years you're undoubtedly getting a steady supply of BPA into your body which can cause significant illness later in life.
Some companies now replace BPA in their cans with other chemicals but they may carry their own environmental and health risks.
Don't be fooled by a sleazy marketing ploy that states this canned food is "BPA-free" because that does not always mean it's free of OTHER bisphenols.
Dry beans are also cheaper than canned so it's a win-win with those. I cook beans in large batches and then freeze them in meal size portions so it's as convenient as using canned beans without the health risk from the cans.
The freezing trick as a great strategy. When you’re in a hurry, it’s much quicker to thaw some cooked beans than to soak and boil dried ones. If you’r soaking and boiling beans anyway, it takes not extra time to cook twice as much and freeze the excess.
Yes, when I cook a batch of dried beans in our slow cooker I make enough to almost fill our small slow cooker ( about 3 quarts / almost 3 liters) and then freeze them in meal size portions. That makes it very quick and easy to make meals like bean salads, chili, Mexican dishes with beans, etc.
This is unusually careful for a food-and-longevity piece, particularly that you put the 47-study null next to the 26-study figures instead of quietly picking one.
Your pivot to substitution may do more than improve the advice. It could also explain why the additive evidence is so inconsistent. In an additive comparison, high legume eaters are pooled regardless of what the legumes displaced. Some got there by dropping red meat, some by dropping refined carbohydrate, some by adding beans on top of everything else. Those are different exposures sitting in one category, and your own German substitution data show the effect size depends on what left the plate, since an egg and 50g of red meat give different numbers.
The Finnish trial makes that visible. LDL fell about 6 percent on legumes and rose about 5 percent on meat. Most of that gap belongs to the swap rather than to the beans. Which would mean the null and the positive findings are not disagreeing about legumes so much as measuring different mixtures of displacement.
You’re absolutely right. Since most of us have a limited capacity for eating, when we eat more of one thing, something else gets bumped off the plate.
Unfortunately these days, it’s often ultra-processed food pushing healthier foods off the plate, but it works just as well in the opposite direction. Greek yogurt and berries instead of cheesecake is a great substitution.
Fair point, and the ultra-processed version is the same mechanism running in reverse, which is probably why it does its damage so quietly.
What I liked in your Health Tweak is that it already encodes this. "Three ~100g swaps this week", a bean chilli instead of a beef one, names what leaves the plate as well as what arrives. Most legume advice only ever specifies the arrival. If next week's practical piece keeps that shape, the recipes end up carrying the evidence, not just the beans.
This is a great article, Ben. I was very interested in the subject of lectins and how proper cooking takes them out. Also I was keenly interested in the potential for a reduction of LDL As mine is a bit elevated, I’m thinking a dietary shift is in order. Thanks for your dedication, insight and great talent for bringing this information to us! Keep up the great work!
I love beans, chickpeas and lentils. Great standbys although I eat all of them each week. No it doesn’t mean more farts. The body adjusts. They are filling and satisfying- oh and cheap
Me, too, Susie! I’ve actually come to prefer beans and lentils over meat. It’s a case of finding some tasty recipes and then you don’t miss meat at all. And yes, it really helps with the grocery bill!
Yes me too. I’m not good with meat or rather it’s not so good for my gut I find, ever since a child. I have a salad at lunchtime and chickpeas are great protein (salmon and sardines rotation too)
Thanks for clarifying about lectins. I had always believed that canned cooked beans had more lectins, so I bought dried beans, soaked overnight and cooked the next day. I would bring to a boil, but then cook on a simmer, as the directions stated. Maybe I’ll save some time and buy the organic canned beans.
I used to feel that dried beans take too long to cook when you start them in the afternoon or evening with a mind towards that day’s dinner. I’ve shifted to cooking them in the morning and it has made a huge difference. I start them on the stove and bring to rapid boil for 15 minutes per Rancho Gordo instructions. I then transfer them to my oven at 250/300 Fahrenheit. By the time breakfast, coffee, news reading, Connections, and dog walking have occurred, they are generally done and ready to be added to meals throughout the week. I do mostly soak them the day or night prior but it is not strictly necessary. A lazy Sunday morning is the perfect time to cook dried beans.
That kind of batch cooking makes meals so much easier during the week. I’ll often cook more than I need and then freeze the cooked beans. They seem to freeze fine, especially if they’re going into chillies, casseroles or curries.
I really love this, "(If any New Zealand readers can explain why you eat so many more beans and lentils than your Australian neighbours, I’d genuinely love to know.)"
Hi Miriam. I can’t claim to being an expert on this topic. My go to resource is a research paper where they measured the lectin levels of a wide variety of different beans.
In that, sugar snap beans have a low level, around that of tomatoes (~250 units). Green beans have much higher lectin levels at 6650 units. For context, kidney and lima beans, which are considered highly toxic when uncooked, have levels of 13,200 and 26,500 respectively.
My understanding is that different plants have different lectins, and they don’t have the same effects on us, and some people might be more sensitive than others.
So, you’re fine eating sugar snap peas. As for the green beans, they don’t seem to be doing you any noticeable harm, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying they were harmless when eaten raw.
Here in Thailand eating raw beans is normal, but the bean si consumed is othe so called Chinese long bean. The raw flavor is pretty much that of a typical green bean, quite grassy, but the bean is normally uncooked when mixed into a dish, and sections cut about 3” long are very typical served with other raw veggies like raw cabbage, cucumber, lettuce leaf, and loads of fresh herbs as a table condiment.
That’s interesting. Someone asked a similar question about raw green beans. My resource for this is a paper in which they measured the lectin content of a wide variety of beans: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/11/2796
Chinese long beans aren’t on there. One would assume that where eating certain beans raw is a routine part of the diet, generations of humans have weeded out the ones that can cause harm. There’s not a great deal on the topic in the medical literature.
We live in Mexico where many types of beans and other legumes have been a staple in the diet for at least 7,000 to 8,000 years since many were originally domesticated in Mexico. Unfortunately, the average per person consumption of cooked legumes has fallen dramatically here from 110 grams a day in the 1980's to just 53g a day now. The decrease is largely due to urbanization and the influence of the ultra-processed SAD (Standard American Diet) much to the detriment of the health of the general population. Ben's point about eating legumes instead of processed red meat and junk foods is spot on.
For people who have trouble (at least initially) digesting beans or other legumes another option is to use garbanzo flour in baking recipes as a substitute for some of the wheat flour. The garbanzo flour adds protein, fiber and nutrients and the finely ground flour is easier to digest than cooked beans. There's no noticeable difference in taste or texture as I found from personal experience baking with it.
Using pea protein powder in smoothies, shakes and baking is another way to add very easy to digest legumes to your diet while boosting protein content.
Dry roasted, lightly salted, soybeans ("soy nuts") and edamame are tasty legume snacks and can be used in place of croutons in salads. Both should be easy to digest for most people.
Loads of great suggestions there, Tom. Am I right in thinking there’s no gluten in chickpea/garbanzo bean flour, so it wouldn’t work for bread? Probably flatbreads though.
It’s sad to hear how the traditional Mexican diet is being supplanted by the dreaded ‘standard American diet.’ You can just imagine executives at the big food conglomerates discussing the vast untapped market in Mexico and strategising on how to expand market share there. Who needs black bean burritos when you can have Pop Tarts instead!
My parents were Italian immigrants. Even though they became fully American in all aspects of their lifestyle, my father built a fixture in the fireplace and all winter long, he would build fires and cook a pot beans in it, because that’s what his parents did “in the old country”.
That’s fantastic! It was clearly so important to him. Do you also have happy memories of those beans? Do you get nostalgic for them?
Do I ever! I eat beans every day! Many such memories: polenta, figs, etc.
In addition to the small measured life span improvement, I believe there is an improvement in quality of life, which admittedly is harder to measure, with addition of beans and lentils. I suspect the change in microbiome accompanying regular beans and lentils might contribute to quiet improvements behind the scenes in things such as mitochondrial function and neurochemistry. As we see better research in effects of gut microbiome, perhaps we will see such items quantified.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I think you’re right. I certainly feel much better after eating a meal where the protein came from legumes vs one with lots of meat. I’m not sure how much is physiological and how much is the psychology of being glad you ate something ‘healthy’.
There’s plenty of evidence that a plant heavy diet is linked with a microbiome profile that’s linked to better health. Like you, I think that’s an exciting field that we’ve so far just scratched the surface of.
I'm one of those people who cooks dried chickpeas in her slow cooker, and thus I'm interested in the lectin "controversy." As far as I can tell, it's only kidney beans that should never be cooked this way. I do see many sites misquoting Dr Greger of Nutrition Facts regarding cooking beans in a slow cooker -- he was talking specifically about kidney beans ONLY. Do you have other info to contradict this?
Hi Bette. I’m relying on scientific papers, as hopefully they provide the most reliable information.
The problem is, there’s no comprehensive set of information that I can find. Kidney beans are the notable example of beans that are toxic when raw and need to be boiled before eating. However, other beans have as high or higher levels of lectins.
My best source measured the lectin levels of a wide range of different beans and other vegetables. Kidney beans has 13,200 units, but Lima beans had 26,500 and black beans had 26,400. Other beans with high levels were pinto beans (13,600), white beans, rashti beans and borlotti (13,300).
There are different types of lectins, and some may be more toxic than others, but I think it’s safe to assume that all of these should be boiled before going into the slow cooker.
You can have at the look at the list for yourself at: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/11/2796- Table 3
When I lived in Canada I often made chili in a slow cooker with kidney beans. I never boiled them in a pot first because the "high" setting on a slow cooker boils the beans. I never had any negative side effects from eating any of the many types of beans I cooked in a slow cooker (using the high temperature setting) without boiling them first.
Hi Tom. I’m assuming you mean dried beans rather than canned beans. Canned beans are already cooked, so no need to worry about lectins there.
The high setting on my slow cooker boils the food, too, though the low setting doesn’t. I guess public bodies have to be conservative in their recommendations.
I always used dry beans and still do because nearly all canned foods use a harmful lining material inside the cans consisting of an epoxy resin made with Bisphenol A (BPA) which is a known endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen and interferes with your body's natural hormone systems. Studies connect exposure to BPA with reproductive issues, metabolic changes, and elevated risks for certain chronic illnesses. The BPA slowly migrates from the resin lining directly into the food, particularly with high-acid content foods like tomatoes. If you eat canned foods for 50+ years you're undoubtedly getting a steady supply of BPA into your body which can cause significant illness later in life.
Some companies now replace BPA in their cans with other chemicals but they may carry their own environmental and health risks.
Don't be fooled by a sleazy marketing ploy that states this canned food is "BPA-free" because that does not always mean it's free of OTHER bisphenols.
Dry beans are also cheaper than canned so it's a win-win with those. I cook beans in large batches and then freeze them in meal size portions so it's as convenient as using canned beans without the health risk from the cans.
The freezing trick as a great strategy. When you’re in a hurry, it’s much quicker to thaw some cooked beans than to soak and boil dried ones. If you’r soaking and boiling beans anyway, it takes not extra time to cook twice as much and freeze the excess.
Yes, when I cook a batch of dried beans in our slow cooker I make enough to almost fill our small slow cooker ( about 3 quarts / almost 3 liters) and then freeze them in meal size portions. That makes it very quick and easy to make meals like bean salads, chili, Mexican dishes with beans, etc.
This is unusually careful for a food-and-longevity piece, particularly that you put the 47-study null next to the 26-study figures instead of quietly picking one.
Your pivot to substitution may do more than improve the advice. It could also explain why the additive evidence is so inconsistent. In an additive comparison, high legume eaters are pooled regardless of what the legumes displaced. Some got there by dropping red meat, some by dropping refined carbohydrate, some by adding beans on top of everything else. Those are different exposures sitting in one category, and your own German substitution data show the effect size depends on what left the plate, since an egg and 50g of red meat give different numbers.
The Finnish trial makes that visible. LDL fell about 6 percent on legumes and rose about 5 percent on meat. Most of that gap belongs to the swap rather than to the beans. Which would mean the null and the positive findings are not disagreeing about legumes so much as measuring different mixtures of displacement.
You’re absolutely right. Since most of us have a limited capacity for eating, when we eat more of one thing, something else gets bumped off the plate.
Unfortunately these days, it’s often ultra-processed food pushing healthier foods off the plate, but it works just as well in the opposite direction. Greek yogurt and berries instead of cheesecake is a great substitution.
Fair point, and the ultra-processed version is the same mechanism running in reverse, which is probably why it does its damage so quietly.
What I liked in your Health Tweak is that it already encodes this. "Three ~100g swaps this week", a bean chilli instead of a beef one, names what leaves the plate as well as what arrives. Most legume advice only ever specifies the arrival. If next week's practical piece keeps that shape, the recipes end up carrying the evidence, not just the beans.
This is a great article, Ben. I was very interested in the subject of lectins and how proper cooking takes them out. Also I was keenly interested in the potential for a reduction of LDL As mine is a bit elevated, I’m thinking a dietary shift is in order. Thanks for your dedication, insight and great talent for bringing this information to us! Keep up the great work!
Thank you Vicki. You’re very kind.
The trick is finding some really tasty recipes. I now enjoy beans and legumes more than meat, so it’s no hardship for me. Lots cheaper, too!
I love beans, chickpeas and lentils. Great standbys although I eat all of them each week. No it doesn’t mean more farts. The body adjusts. They are filling and satisfying- oh and cheap
Me, too, Susie! I’ve actually come to prefer beans and lentils over meat. It’s a case of finding some tasty recipes and then you don’t miss meat at all. And yes, it really helps with the grocery bill!
Yes me too. I’m not good with meat or rather it’s not so good for my gut I find, ever since a child. I have a salad at lunchtime and chickpeas are great protein (salmon and sardines rotation too)
Thanks for clarifying about lectins. I had always believed that canned cooked beans had more lectins, so I bought dried beans, soaked overnight and cooked the next day. I would bring to a boil, but then cook on a simmer, as the directions stated. Maybe I’ll save some time and buy the organic canned beans.
I’ll be interested to see how you think they compare. I definitely prefer dried beans, but they do require foresight that I don’t always have.
I used to feel that dried beans take too long to cook when you start them in the afternoon or evening with a mind towards that day’s dinner. I’ve shifted to cooking them in the morning and it has made a huge difference. I start them on the stove and bring to rapid boil for 15 minutes per Rancho Gordo instructions. I then transfer them to my oven at 250/300 Fahrenheit. By the time breakfast, coffee, news reading, Connections, and dog walking have occurred, they are generally done and ready to be added to meals throughout the week. I do mostly soak them the day or night prior but it is not strictly necessary. A lazy Sunday morning is the perfect time to cook dried beans.
That kind of batch cooking makes meals so much easier during the week. I’ll often cook more than I need and then freeze the cooked beans. They seem to freeze fine, especially if they’re going into chillies, casseroles or curries.
Beans, beans, the musical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot!
I really love this, "(If any New Zealand readers can explain why you eat so many more beans and lentils than your Australian neighbours, I’d genuinely love to know.)"
Beans worked well into a Mediterranean and related style diet. Though many call for white beans and will do. https://www.themediterraneandish.com/?s=beans
With meat prices these days, this can be an economic alternative.
Good work!
Thanks! You’re dead right. When you compare prices in the meat and bean aisles, the math isn’t hard.
Still no idea why Kiwis eat so many beans!
Another great article, Ben.
I've given it a prominent link in an update to my post about beans:
https://drmick.substack.com/p/about-beans
I prefer most vegetables raw and this includes sugar snap peas and green beans. Are you saying these should not be eaten raw?
Hi Miriam. I can’t claim to being an expert on this topic. My go to resource is a research paper where they measured the lectin levels of a wide variety of different beans.
In that, sugar snap beans have a low level, around that of tomatoes (~250 units). Green beans have much higher lectin levels at 6650 units. For context, kidney and lima beans, which are considered highly toxic when uncooked, have levels of 13,200 and 26,500 respectively.
My understanding is that different plants have different lectins, and they don’t have the same effects on us, and some people might be more sensitive than others.
So, you’re fine eating sugar snap peas. As for the green beans, they don’t seem to be doing you any noticeable harm, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying they were harmless when eaten raw.
If you wanted to check that list, you’ll find it at: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/11/2796
Thanks so snap peas raw and green beans cooked. Got it. And thanks.
Here in Thailand eating raw beans is normal, but the bean si consumed is othe so called Chinese long bean. The raw flavor is pretty much that of a typical green bean, quite grassy, but the bean is normally uncooked when mixed into a dish, and sections cut about 3” long are very typical served with other raw veggies like raw cabbage, cucumber, lettuce leaf, and loads of fresh herbs as a table condiment.
That’s interesting. Someone asked a similar question about raw green beans. My resource for this is a paper in which they measured the lectin content of a wide variety of beans: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/11/2796
Chinese long beans aren’t on there. One would assume that where eating certain beans raw is a routine part of the diet, generations of humans have weeded out the ones that can cause harm. There’s not a great deal on the topic in the medical literature.