LiveLongAgeWell

Last Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed a dinner of the national dish of Brazil, feijoada (fehz-waada), so I was happy to see that this week the New York Times featured black beans (the principal component of feijoada), as the topic for its Recipes for Health series.

You probably know that legumes—which includes black beans as well as the color spectrum of others such as navy, red, pinto, and white—are healthy, but my guess is you don’t know how great they really are, and that the black variety is the healthiest of the lot. Some of the benefits of black beans:

1.    They are full of fiber, which naturally lowers your cholesterol absorption and production. High fiber diets have been linked with lower heart attack and stroke risk.
2.    Beans are also loaded with the best type of carbohydrates, the complex type, which are slowly absorbed and provide your body with long-lasting energy without the spikes in blood sugar seen with many carbs.  Beans are especially good for those with sugar control issues, and recently, blood sugar spikes have been implicated in long-term memory decline.
3.    Surprisingly, beans and particularly black beans are full of the same antioxidants, anthocyanins, that are found in grapes. Recent research has shown the darker the bean, the higher the antioxidant content. Black beans actually contain about the same anthocyanin content, weight-for-weight, as grapes and cranberries.
4.    They are low in calories and almost completely fat-free.
5.    Especially for a fruit/vegetable, they are full of protein…one cup provides about a third of your daily protein needs.
6.    Beans have high iron content, and are full of the wonderful trace element molybdenum, as well as heart-healthy folate (a B vitamin) and magnesium.
7.    Black beans likely have anti-cancer properties.
8.    They store well for long periods of time, and are cheap.

The downsides to beans are that they take some time to prepare and cook…the healthiest way is to cook them yourself rather than using canned beans (interestingly, in Brazil, you cannot even find or buy canned beans), and beans tend to cause gas (despite that they are considered beneficial for most people’s gastrointestinal tracts). Pre-soaking the raw hard beans in water for at least six hours makes them easier to cook and also decreases the gas problem. Then simmering beans can take an hour or two, but if cooked in a pressure cooker, it goes down to 30 minutes.

The Times mini-series details several black bean recipes, including basic simmered beans, black bean soup with spinach, and a healthy alternative to traditional fat-filled refried beans.

Real Brazilian feijoada is another matter entirely, and what’s in it depends on the region you live. The one I had last week had black beans mixed with various types of pork and sausages, potatoes, cabbage, squash, and collard greens. Here is one recipe from foodbuzz if you want to experiment. You can even find feijoada made only with chicken, or without meat, although those would not be considered true feijoadas by most (carnivorous) Brazilians.

But if you don’t want to spend the time making feijoada, try at least basic black beans from scratch. It will be worth the effort in taste and nutrition, and the more you can divorce yourself from canned food, the better! (But if you really don’t have the time or inclination to make from scratch, canned low-sodium black beans are an OK substitute.)

All in all, I would wager that black beans are the least expensive super-food we have, and these days, that is something to consider.

Based on last week’s survey results, rather than every week sending out two email updates to subscribers, I will send out one to two weekly based on the content. And as always,  three fresh posts will magically appear on the LLAW website itself every week.