Legumes

Swarna Moldanado

Description

Moldanado was curious to learn why legumes were so overlooked in Western diets compared to that of her native India. Her subsequent research turned up a number of misconceptions and inaccuracies as reasons for the prevailing lack of interest in them. This, in turn, led her to research legume-based diets in other parts of the world to ascertain what, if any, impact they had on health and disease in those locales. This book presents her findings.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Diététique
• diététique
• Nutrition
• Fitness
• Health
• Diet
• Legume

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781591207030
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

LEGUMES
The Super Foods That Should Be Regulars on Your Plate
LEGUMES
The Super Foods That Should Be Regulars on Your Plate
Swarna Moldanado, Ph.D.
The information contained in this book is based upon the research and personal and professional experiences of the author. It is not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician or other healthcare provider. Any attempt to diagnose and treat an illness should be done under the direction of a healthcare professional.
The publisher does not advocate the use of any particular healthcare protocol but believes the information in this book should be available to the public. The publisher and author are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences resulting from the use of the suggestions, preparations, or procedures discussed in this book. Should the reader have any questions concerning the appropriateness of any procedures or preparation mentioned, the author and the publisher strongly suggest consulting a professional healthcare advisor.
Basic Health Publications, Inc.
28812 Top of the World Drive
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
949-715-7327 • www.basichealthpub.com
ISBN 978-1-59120-703-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available through the Library of Congress.
Copyright © 2013 by Swarna Moldanado.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
Interior photos copyright Can Stock Photo.
Editor: Roberta W. Waddell
Typesetting/Book design: Gary A. Rosenberg
Cover design: Mike Stromberg
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. Legume Consumption—A Historical Perspective
2. The Food Value of Legumes
3. Straight Talk on Buzzwords
4. Health Implications of Changes in the Traditional Diet of Selected Countries
5. Most Commonly Eaten Legumes in the U.S. and Around the World
6. Cooking, Sprouting, and Storing Legumes
7. Recipes
Summary
References
Recommended Reading
About the Author
To Alex,
for his abiding faith in me.
Acknowledgments
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to my publisher Norman Goldfind for accepting my work. I also owe my thanks to him for assigning Bobby Waddell as my editor. Bobby is a master of her craft, and her attention to detail is awe-inspiring. I feel fortunate to have had her as my editor. My thanks to Mike Stromberg for his ingenuity in designing the book cover, and to Gary Rosenberg for undertaking the tedious task of making the illustrations fit the text perfectly. Finally, my special thanks go to my new friend Mary McVey Gill for reading the introductory sections and offering me her suggestions from which I benefited.
Preface
While I was growing up in India, legumes were a regular part of my diet. I don’t remember when one kind of legume or another was not part of a meal, beginning with breakfast. Although we were not vegetarians as a family, and ate meat, poultry, and fish a few times a week, grains, legumes, and vegetables were the dominant part of our diet. But that changed when I emigrated to the U.S. Here my plate was filled more with meat or meat products, less with grains and vegetables, and rarely with legumes. This was not a conscious choice on my part, but came about because of what was served in the places I ate, such as campus cafeterias.
At first, I did not pay much attention to the missing familiar elements, like legumes, but once I started preparing my own meals, I realized what I had been missing in my American diet and started adding them back again. Chief among them were dry beans, peas, and lentils. Over the years, I noticed that, while the typical American diet often included fresh green beans and peas, it rarely contained dry beans, peas, and lentils.
As a nurse educator with a background in public health, I often talked about the importance of a healthful diet for preventing disease and promoting health. For decades, people have known that the large amounts of saturated fat contained mainly in meat, poultry, and other animal products is unhealthy, and that the unsaturated fat contained mainly in plant-based foods, is healthy. Yet, like much of the diet in Western Europe, the standard American diet (SAD) consists of an abundance of calorie-dense, high-fat, animal-based foods, and an insufficient amount of low-fat, high-fiber, plant-based foods. This is despite the United States Department of Agriculture’s recommendation to eat five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables daily, and at least three cups of legumes a week, or half a cup of cooked legumes each day.
My initial research into why there was a lack of enthusiasm for legumes in the American diet was quite revealing. The reasons included many prevailing misconceptions and inaccuracies about legumes as a food. Recognizing that a first step in facilitating any change in behavior, including eating behavior, is to make accurate, credible information available, I expanded my research to include learning about legume-based diets in selected countries around the world. My purpose was to learn how the traditional legume-based diets impacted health and disease in those countries. This book is the result of that quest, and fulfills my desire to share my findings with a broader audience.
Although this is not a book on weight loss, the steadily rising rates of overweight and obesity in the U.S., and the chronic diseases attributable to marked overweight were also factors prompting me to write this book.
The book is divided into seven main chapters and a summary, followed by the back matter. Chapter 1 deals with a global evolutionary account of dry beans, peas, and lentils in the human diet. Chapter 2 details the value and benefits of legumes as food. Because nutrition and health literature is fraught with buzzwords, Chapter 3 is devoted to providing factual descriptions of terms that are most frequently heard. Chapter 4 is a compilation of findings from several studies on diet and the implications for health and disease in selected countries over time. Chapter 5 discusses the most commonly consumed legumes around the world. Chapter 6 outlines methods of preparing, cooking, and sprouting legumes, and Chapter 7 provides sample recipes for cooking with legumes. The Summary, References, Recommended Reading, and an Index finish out the book.
—S.M
Introduction
I t is no secret that two out of three Americans are overweight and two out of five are obese, the latter term generally defined as being 30 percent or more over the ideal body weight. This is in spite of the collective obsession about being thin. As a nation, Americans have not always been fat, so why are they now succumbing to this burgeoning health problem?
A partial answer may be found in the fact that the current environment is inundated with unhealthy foods that not only lead to weight gain, but also lay the foundation for chronic diseases, such as heart disease, certain cancers, and adult-onset diabetes. Conversely, some foods that provide good nutrients in abundance to help people stay lean and healthy for the long run remain below the radar and don’t get the attention they deserve. Legumes undoubtedly belong to the latter category, and for a variety of reasons they have been undervalued, underconsumed, and even maligned as a food.
In this book, the word legume is used to refer to dry beans, peas, and lentils, although technically the term can refer to podded vegetables in general. Botanically, legumes are seeds of plants belonging to the family Leguminosae , which is one of the three largest families of flowering plants. Legumes have been cultivated and consumed for thousands of years in many parts of the world, and are considered super foods. What makes them super foods? Although, to date, there does not seem to be an agreed-upon or universally accepted definition of what super foods are, those foods generally referred to as super foods, such as almonds, avocados, bananas, blueberries, legumes, oats, pomegranates, pumpkins, walnuts, and wild-caught salmon, share some attributes. They are rich in vitamins and minerals, contain generous amounts of soluble and insoluble fiber (both associated with significant health benefits), have little or no saturated fat, and are generally low in calories. Naturally, any food that has these qualities belongs in a class above foods that lack one or more of these health-promoting and disease-preventing attributes.
Legumes as a group not only possess all the nutritional qualities mentioned above, but are also high in protein. They are deficient in a sufficient quantity of one essential amino acid to make them a complete protein, but the missing amino acid can be obtained from a complementary food, such as a grain, and the combination makes them a complete protein. Legumes as a source of protein are particularly important in plant-based diets. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommend three cups of legumes per week, or half a cup of cooked legumes on a daily basis. This recommendation is based on empirical data drawn from studies that have shown that eating at least 100 grams of legumes per week is associated with many health benefits.
In a twenty-five-year study that examined food-intake patterns and risk of death from coronary heart disease, researchers followed more than 16,000 middle-aged men in the U.S., Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the former Yugoslavia.
The typical food patterns found were:
•  Higher consumption of dairy products in Northern Europe;
•  Higher consumption of meat in the U.S.;
•  Higher consumption of vegetables, legumes, fish, and wi