Beauty And The Bean

Legumes have been used through out the earth, for thousand of years. They come in hundreds of shapes, sizes and colors. They are versatile and amazingly convenient because they can be dried and stored for years. Soaking beans for a couple of hours brings them back to life, activating enzymes, proteins, minerals and vitamins.

Beans can be eaten raw, sprouted or cooked, ground into flour, curdled into tofu, fermented into soya sauce, tempi and miso. They are excellent in chilies, soups and salads. Beans are high in iron and packed with protein. They are also a rich source of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, potassium, phosphorous and an excellent source of fiber and complex carbohydrates. They are low in sodium and saturated fats.

Beans have an unhappy reputation of creating an embarrassing byproduct of smelly gas. This gas which consists mainly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, is the byproduct of bacteria in the intestine breaking down the complex carbohydrates in the beans. Here is a flatulence rating for beans from the highest gas producing to the least:

soybeans
pink beans
black beans
pinto beans
small white beans
great northern beans
baby lima beans
chick peas
large lima beans
black-eyed peas

Avoid eating fruits shortly or after a meal of starches, such as bread or beans, will cause excessive gas. Remember that when simple sugar and starch are digested within 2-4 hours of each other, the starch slows down the digestion of fruits to the intestines causing fermentation and excessive gas.