Finger on the pulse

Beans means… a longer life, according to a study at Norway’s University of Bergen. The research, published in the journal PLOS Medicine last month, estimated that changing from the typical Western diet to a better one – including plenty of pulses like beans and lentils – could add more than a decade to your life if you start in your 20s. If you’re well past that (me too), the good news is that starting later still reaps rewards: switching to an optimal diet at 60 could add eight years, and even making the change at 80 could mean an extra three years on your life expectancy.

Even if you don’t change your diet completely, just eating 200g (most of a tin of chickpeas, say) of pulses a day may be enough to add more than two years to a 20-yearold’s life. It makes sense: pulses are nutritional powerhouses, and eating a pulse-rich diet is linked with bringing down cholesterol levels, lower weight and reduced cancer risk. They perform a nutritional double whammy by counting as one of our five a day as well as being a significant protein source.

It gets better: pulses are also a rich source of resistant starch, fermentable fibre that is great for a healthy gut, and which may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. That resistant starch may be good for our brains too, with recent research suggesting that by boosting our intestinal microbiota, it can improve cognition through the brain-gut axis, and even our moods.

There is of course a minor downside: as the playground chant goes, ‘Baked beans are good for your heart, the more you eat, the more you fart.’ The wind factor is caused by indigestible oligosaccharides, the same annoying components that make Jerusalem artichokes so potentially embarrassing, while also being exceptionally good for your microbiome. Josiah Meldrum of British pulse specialist Hodmedod’s suggests adding a strip of kelp seaweed to your cooking water, as it is said to reduce the oligosaccharides.

Why don’t we eat more pulses? Brits eat fewer than the global average, even if we do put away two million tins of baked beans a day.

Confusion over the names doesn’t help: they are often called legumes although these are the plants, members of the family Fabaceae (aka Leguminosae). Their seeds, the actual pulses, grow in pods and include beans, peas, lentils and peanuts (confusingly not nuts at all). For culinary purposes, we divide them by shape: lentils are flattened or ‘lens’-shaped, peas are more or less spherical, beans more oval.

Tinned pulses are a great standby, though the flavour can be flat. Posh jars are generally good-quality, with huge beans, but expensive. The best option of all is to cook your own: it’s not just the cheapest route, but you can flavour the cooking water with herbs and spices, which can then be used in the final dish too.