Eating Legumes Reduces Heart Disease Risks, Says New Review

According to a review of previous prospective cohort studies, eating beans, lentils, peas, and other legumes reduces the risk for cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and high blood pressure.

Dietary pulses with or without other legumes are associated with reduced cardiovascular disease incidence with low certainty and reduced coronary heart disease, hypertension, and obesity incidence with very low certainty. Imager credit: Niek Verlaan.

“Cardiovascular disease is the world’s leading — and most expensive — cause of death, costing the United States nearly 1 billion dollars a day,” said co-author Dr. Hana Kahleova, from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine.

“This review shows that an inexpensive, accessible, and common pantry staple could help change that: beans.”

Dr. Kahleova and colleagues searched the PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases through March 2019.

They included prospective cohort studies that assessed consumption of legumes on the risk for cardiometabolic diseases and related markers.

They found that those who consumed the most legumes reduced incidence rates for cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and hypertension by as much as 10% when compared to those with the lowest intakes.

“Beans and other legumes benefit cardiovascular health because they are high in fiber, plant protein, and other micronutrients, but low in fat, free of cholesterol, and low on the glycemic index,” they said.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans says that Americans are not eating enough legumes and recommends eating about three cups per week. The average American consumes less than a cup a week.

“Americans eat less than one serving of legumes per day, on average,” Dr. Kahleova said.

“Simply adding more beans to our plates could be a powerful tool in fighting heart disease and bringing down blood pressure.”

The review paper was published in the journal Advances in Nutrition.

_____

Effie Viguiliouk et al. 2019. Associations between Dietary Pulses Alone or with Other Legumes and Cardiometabolic Disease Outcomes: An Umbrella Review and Updated Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies. Advances in Nutrition 10, supplement 4: S308-S319; doi: 10.1093/advances/nmz113