Fast food isn’t known for its health benefits, but it turns out that fast-cooking beans are actually healthier than varieties that take longer to cook. Dry beans are an important source of protein and nutrients, particularly in parts of Africa, South America and North America. The beans, however, can take a long time to cook and this can be an obstacle to their consumption.
Researchers compared twelve varieties of dry beans. For the four classes of beans (yellow, cranberry, red mottled and light red kidney), the scientists studied three varieties that varied in their cooking time. Overall, the cooking time ranged from 20 minutes to an hour and a half. (The beans were soaked in water for twelve hours before cooking.)
The varieties that cooked quickly retained more protein than the beans that took longer to cook. Also, “the faster cooking entries within each market class retained significantly more potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc and copper as com pared to the moderate and slow-cooking entries.” The fastest-cooking varieties in the study were G23086 (a cranberry bean) and Cebo Cela (a yellow bean). Overall, the cranberry and yellow beans cooked more quickly than the red mottled and light red kidney beans.
Freshness is often associated with nutritional value in vegetables but it also plays a role in dry beans. The longer the beans were stored, the longer they took to cook. In some cases, beans that were a year old took a half hour longer to cook than freshly harvested beans (of the same variety). As with fresh beans, the longer cooking time led to a greater loss in nutritional value.
Source: Demonstrating a Nutritional Advantage to the Fast-Cooking Dry Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Jason A. Wiesinger, Karen A. Cichy, Raymond P. Glahn et al. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chem- istry. 2016. Volume 64, Issue 45, pp 8592–8603.
- Janet Wallace