Fast cooking dry beans possess best nutritional value in all varieties

Fast cooking dry beans contain better nutritional value as compared to legumes that require more time to cook, suggests a recent research published in the ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Based on the WHO estimates, about 2 billion people around the world are deficient in key vitamins and minerals including iron and zinc.

And the research suggests that fast cooking dry beans could help address these deficiencies as it retains more protein, iron and other minerals.

The researchers analyzed the nutritional value of 12 fast, moderate and slow-cooking dry bean cultivars from four classes: yellow, cranberry, light red kidney and red mottled.

The speedier beans maintained higher protein and mineral content after they were prepared than the moderate and slow cooking varieties.

For example, the fast-cooking yellow bean Cebo Cela contained 20 percent more protein, 10 percent more iron and 10 percent more zinc than the yellow bean Canario, which took twice as long to prepare.

Further testing showed that the iron bioavailability (the amount that a person's body would absorb) is also higher in the quicker-cooking beans in each of the four classes examined.