Beans hard to digest?

 

DIGESTION OF LEGUMES

Some people have a problem digesting beans, claiming bloating or flatulence. Cooking the beans in the soaking water can be responsible for this annoyance.

A very few individuals have a sensitivity to all legumes: beans, peas, lentils, garbanzo beans, etc, causing diarrhea. They should not eat any legumes, including bean sprouts, soy oil or products containing soy proteins. The symptoms are almost instant diarrhea, or a slight episode after ingesting a small amount of soy oil, flour, or "textured" soy protein from a "packaged," ready to cook box of prepared food. Frozen TV dinners almost always contain soy oil. Virtually all mayonnaise is made from soy oil. So "let the buyer read the ingredients" - carefully!

A simple reason for "normal" symptoms of "gas" after eating a meal of beans is the following: some persons who seldom eat dry beans in their meals may feel the temporary effects of an overload of B vitamins. Legumes are a rich source of the B complex family. The unwanted symptoms will quickly disappear once beans are a part of the regular diet.

 

One suggestion is to "sprout" your beans before you cook them, and cook as directed.

Beans just need a good presoaking to soften them.  This is "my version" which begins the day before.  Place presorted beans in a stainless steel bowl, boil water and add to the beans and cover with lid.  Let soak until water is cooled, and empty cool water.  Do another boiling hot water bath for overnight, and in the morning drain the cooled water.  Your beans (if they're not old beans) should be quite soft and ready to cook.  I cook mine as crockpot chili for supper, yum. 

 

#1 ... old beans usually stay hard and tough no matter how long you soak!  Better to pressure can it or grind it up for flour.

#2 ... Use "newer" beans and a good presoak  or ...

#3 ... sprout your beans before cooking

 

 

K.

 

Somewhere in a box out in the garage I have a book on the nutritional difference between bean seeds and sprouted seeds.  There is an amazing increase in various nutritional aspects when the seed sprouts.

 

  Anybody have any on-line data?

 

The biggest advantage: sprouted beans make nearly gasless chili!  Try it and see.

I doubt that too many people can be seriously affected by beans.  Gasiness is a nuisance, and occasionally uncomfortable (or embarrassing), but it's not up there with real health problems.  But if you have any doubt, I would suggest finding out now, instead of when you are trapped in your house with 10 people and 2 tons of beans as your main food source.  The idea, anyway, is to eat what you are storing, to ensure rotation and freshness of supplies.

 

And the claim that the problems in beans are from B vitamins doesn't make sense; there are more B vitamins in a bowl of fortified cereal or a multivitamin pill.

 

As far as actually eating them:

 

1) If you introduce them into your diet gradually they tend to be better tolerated.

2) You can use Beano in the early stages to help further.