Beans are a nutritional powerhouse if you ask me. They are an inexpensive way to include fiber, protein, carbs, and micronutrients such as folate in our diets. Some of you may defer away from beans because of the well known side affect – gas. However, I want to ensure you all are eating plant proteins like beans because of their magnesium, potassium, iron content along with the other nutrients I just mentioned! Raffinose, stachyose, and verbacose are all non-digestible short-chain carbohydrates which are believed to provide health benefits, they’re also a major contributor to the intestinal gas that results from adding more beans to the diet. Here are some tips for taming the gas-producing compounds in beans! So with that said, here are some handy tips and tricks to decrease beans from producing excess gas in our bodies:
- Mix 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda or a spoon of vinegar into the soaking water. Soak beans for eight to 10 hours.
- Rinse beans thoroughly and don’t cook beans in the water in which they were soaked because it contains the gas-causing sugars.
- Slow cook beans in a crock pot for several hours.
- Drain and rinse canned beans; this will significantly reduce the gas-producing oligosaccharides (Raffinose, stachyose, and verbacose).
- Add beans to the diet in small amounts in the beginning until you get used to it. Info adapted from: http://www.med.umich.edu/umim/food-pyramid/legs.html [Tweet “Kidney Bean Veggie Burgers…way too yummy! | Krollskorner.com”]
