Beans and lentils are high fiber content ensures that the sugars in them are released slowly into your bloodstream, resulting in a nice, even flow of energy rather than the quick spike and drop associated with, say, a candy bar (not that you’d ever eat one of those things!).
The protein in beans and lentils is filling, and the carbs in them provide a great, slow-burning source of fuel. Eat beans on a Monday morning and your blood sugar won’t drop again until Tuesday afternoon. (Just kidding – but you get the idea). Garbanzo beans and lentils are particularly high in fiber, 12.5 grams and 16 grams per cup, respectively. You can’t do better than that!
I recently interviewed dan Buettner, the National Geographic Explorer whose New York Times best-selling book The Blue Zones chronicled the lifestyles and diets of people in four areas around the world (“blue zones”) where there are the highest numbers of healthy centenarians. These folks, who are scattered around the globe in the far-ranging places of Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, California; the Okinawa prefecture in Japan and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costs Rica, are among the healthiest, leanest, and most energetic in the world. Many of them are still active in their early hundreds!
Buettner told me one of the features shared by all their diets was a high intake of beans. “Beans, whole grains, and garden vegetables are the cornerstone of all these longevity diets”, he said. The Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda who ate legumes (such as peas and beans) three times a week had a 30 to 40 percent reduction in colon cancer. The Okinawan diet is high in bean curd (tofu), and the classic Sardinian and Nicoyan diets are also high in locally grown beans.
Something to think about.
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