

Phytates for the Prevention of OsteoporosisĪnd for a tasty bean-filled dinner, try the Three Bean Chili (click through for the free recipe) from my How Not to Die Cookbook.Phytates for Rehabilitating Cancer Cells.Gut Dysbiosis Starving Our Microbial Self.The Hispanic Paradox: Why do Latinos Live Longer?.Other videos on practical prep tips include:įor even more on the benefits of beans, check out: Mostly I just used canned (until I got an electric pressure cooker). Beans, Beans, They’re Good For Your Heart.Sprouting is so much fun! I’ve got tons of videos on broccoli sprouts, for example: Biggest Nutrition Bang for Your Buck.īut again, whichever way we like them we should eat them. Please consider volunteering to help out on the site. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. Sprouting’s like gardening on steroids! But using canned beans I can get similar nutrition in about 2 to 3 seconds. It’s amazing that I can create fresh produce in 2 to 3 days on my kitchen counter. I do love my lentil sprouts, one of the healthiest snacks on the planet (along with kale chips). So what’s the takeaway? As far as I’m concerned, we should eat beans in whichever way will get us to eat the most of them. But with some boiled bean extract on board the astrocytes were protected at the two higher doses, but the sprouted beans didn’t appear to offer significant benefit. Same thing but this time we’re going to damage the astrocytes with an oxidative chemical that killed off about a quarter of the cells. And sprouted beans seem to even help them grow a little bit.

And this is the after, adding boiled bean extract. This is the before, dripping nothing on astrocytes in a petri dish, 100% viability. To see if beans would help protect astrocytes from damage, first they had to make sure bean extracts wouldn’t cause any damage. So if we’re thinking clearly, we should thank our lucky stars. Should they become damaged, though, they may an important role in the development in neurodegenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s. They are star-shaped cells that keep our brain running smoothly. Given that elderly persons reporting always eating legumes may be significantly less likely to experience cognitive decline, the researchers decided to compare the protective effects of boiled versus sprouted beans on astrocytes.Īstrocytes are the most abundant type of cell in our brain. The researchers were also interested in brain protection. Similar results were found for melanoma, processing the beans-either cooking or sprouting boosted anticancer activity in vitro, but against kidney cancer, raw and boiled worked, but sprouted didn’t at all. No amount of raw bean extract works, but both boiled and sprouted beans can. And same thing with actually killing off cancer. No amount of raw bean extract appears able to totally stop the growth of breast cancer cells, but just small amounts of cooked or sprouted beans can. Now you can’t even eat most beans raw, but I wanted to include them just to show you a fascinating phenomenon. Same cancer growth inhibition at just a fraction of the concentration, and sprouted beans do about the same. This is the concentration of raw bean extract needed to cut the breast cancer growth rate in half in a petri dish. Because the positive effects of these compounds may be related to their antioxidant capacity, you can compare the overall antioxidant power of boiled versus sprouted beans, for which boiled appears to have a marginal edge, but ideally we’d actually measure physiological effects, like what about boiled versus sprouted against cancer cells. The easiest way to compare is to just measure the quantity of the polyphenol phytonutrients thought to account for some of their protective benefits against chronic disease, for example the anthocyanin pigments that make these particular beans so pretty.Īs you can see, sprouted beans have more of some, but less than others, in fact you see that across the board with the other phenolic phytonutrients. Which is healthier? There hadn’t been a head-to-head comparisons, until now.

Boiling is the most common cooking method, which is what’s used to make canned beans, but sprouting is becoming more popular. Beans, chickpeas, split peas, and lentils are packed with nutrients and play a role in the prevention of chronic disease, but most can’t be eaten raw.
