Let’s see how many interesting facts about beans we can bring together.
Beans are legumes (family Leguminosae). Most legumes have symbiotic relationships with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their root systems. As a result legumes like beans are often used in organic agriculture and permaculture as a replacement for (the nitrogen component of) artificial fertilizer.
This study models a global scenario without synthetic fertilizers, which assumes “20% of legume crops in crop rotations, i.e. a legume crop every 5 years”.
Mexican jumping beans are seeds that are inhabited by the larvae of a small moth (Cydia saltitans). Another fact about them is that they are not actually beans, and so now I’m not sure if this fact belongs here!
Thanks, that led me to this article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/taking-a-walk-on-the-random-side-helps-mexican-jumping-beans-find-shade/
“These results suggest that diffusive motion [random walks] in Mexican jumping beans does not optimize for finding shade quickly,” the authors concluded. “Rather, Mexican jumping beans use a strategy that minimizes the chances of never finding shade when shade is sparse.”
Often grown together with maize and squash in a form of “companion planting”, beans have long been a key crop in pre-Columbian North and South America.
The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Indigenous peoples of North America: squash, maize (“corn”), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans). In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds. (Wiki).
(Also see: Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.)
What Causes Bean-Induced Flatulence? Before one can decide what to test, we need to know what we’re looking for. Most toot-inducing foods contain ingredients called FODMAPs (an acronym for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols—quite a mouthful). Humans cannot digest FODMAPs, but bacteria in our gut can. The byproduct of that bacterial digestion is gas. The FODMAPs that make beans the musical fruit are a small group of oligosaccharides (complex sugars). In theory, if you can reduce the amount of those oligosaccharides in your beans, you can reduce the amount of gas they produce.
Reference and an interesting study https://www.seriouseats.com/bean-science-how-to-reduce-gas-tested-6755268#toc-what-causes-bean-induced-flatulence
Quite a mouthful
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Fodmap
This is somewhat onomatopoeic.
Popular beans, such as green beans, kidney beans, and lima beans, only reached Europe and Asia after the "Columbian exchange, starting in 1492. (link).
All of these beans are members of the Phaseolus genus (family = Fabaceae).
The “common bean” is called the Phaseolus vulgaris, because it’s a bit vulgar.
Coffee beans are not beans, they’re seeds, from a fruit.
The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras lived with a cult of followers, who, while being vegetarians, avoided eating beans.
Like the Ancient Egyptians and Romans, they considered broad beans (also known as fava beans) a supernatural symbol of death. And due to a deadly allergy, the beans likely deserved their reputation.
According to Pliny, Pythagoreans believed that fava beans could contain the souls of the dead, since they were flesh-like. Due to their black-spotted flowers and hollow stems, some believers thought the plants connected earth and Hades, providing ladders for human souls. The beans’ association with reincarnation and the soul made eating fava beans close to cannibalism. Aristotle, writing earlier, went much further. One possible reason for the ban, he wrote, was that the bulbous shape of beans represented the entire universe.
Some bioactive compounds in beans are reported to mitigate cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, hyper-cholesterolemia, and cancer (link).
Uebersax, M. A., Cichy, K. A., Gomez, F. E., Porch, T. G., Heitholt, J., Osorno, J. M., … & Bales, S. (2023). Dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) as a vital component of sustainable agriculture and food security—A review. Legume Science, 5(1), e155.
The world’s tallest bean plant was 46 feet tall!
Beans are related to clover, peanuts, alfalfa, peas, and lupin.Neanderthals used pulses when cooking meals 70,000 years ago.
Ok, maybe megathread was a bit ambitious. But thanks for your facts!
