Pulses, the superfood to watch out for in 2016
From lentils to the Sichuan bean, legumes - nutritious, sustainable and affordable - are being pushed into the public consciousness and, hopefully, onto dinner tables around the world by the UN this year, writes Joe Yonan.
If you're trying to shift your diet towards more nutritious foods, you need to make friends with dried beans, chickpeas and lentils, if you haven't already. Their nutritional benefits are legendary. Just one example: studies of the world's longest-living people (in the so-called "blue zones") find that such beans are the one specific food they all eat in common.
But health is just one focus of a new United Nations campaign around these wonders; the UN has declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses, a global marketing effort promoting their promise in feeding a growing population. (Such declarations only occasionally involve edible crops, by the way: the last two such designations were quinoa, in 2013, and potatoes, in 2008. Last year, the two subjects were soil and light/light-based technologies.) Among other things, the campaign asked member nations to submit recipes for signature dishes using pulses. It also inspired United States and Canadian growers to launch the Pulse Pledge, a website where eaters can "pledge" to eat more pulses and get access to recipes, cooking tips and more.
Below, Tim McGreevy, a pulse farmer in Washington state and chief executive of the American Pulse Association, talks about the campaign and about growing, cooking and eating pulses (which are sometimes referred to as "grain legumes").
"They're a legume. The legume category is broad. It includes soya beans, it includes peanuts. The category of pulse crops actually is a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation definition. There are 11 types, but [some of] the primary pulse crops are dry beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas, a little bit of fava beans as well. They're in their dry form; they're not fresh. We're not fresh peas, we're not fresh green beans, which are terrific products but not pulse products. Pulses are really defined because they have a low oil content compared with the other legumes in the family."
? "Yes. Soya beans have a very high oil content, and so do peanuts. Pulses really are in their own category in the legume matrix.
"Legume plants are unique in the plant kingdom because they fix much of their own nitrogen in the soil from the air. The pulse crops in particular are very good at fixing nitrogen. They require none to very little fertiliser to produce a good crop, which is absolutely critical."
