How can eating beans help me stay healthy?
The fact is that the healthiest cultures do eat beans every day. They have it in one form or another, whether it's in their breakfast, their dinner, or their lunch; whatever, but they eat beans every day. So, we recommend based on the healthiest cultures and longevity (they're healthy and they live a long life), that you get between five and six servings of legumes every week. A serving ranges between a half cup and three quarters of the cup, basically depending on the type of bean. I usually recommend to my clients that if they get a half cup, then that's great. There is something that we need to address here. If you've never eaten beans and you suddenly start eating them, you probably will develop gastric distress, to put it mildly. What I recommend is that people start with a spoonful beans; just a spoonful. The first day that they have it, and maybe for two or three days, they just have just one spoonful of beans. Then the next, three days after that they'll have two tablespoons of beans, and then three days later they'll have three tablespoons, until they work up to a half a cup. That way you usually will start producing the enzymes that you need in order to utilise the nutrients in the beans and not develop gastric distress, or gas, we'll just be blunt about it. It's very important to get that through to people; that they do need to slowly incorporate the beans and then they will be able to produce the enzymes to break them down. It's that philosophy of "use it or lose it"; if you don't eat beans, you don't produce the enzymes to break them down. If you eat them, you start producing the enzymes to break them down.
