 Legumes, by which they mean all kinds of beans, chickpeas, plopis, and lentils, are an excellent source of many essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fibers, antioxidants, and not just an excellent source, perhaps the single cheapest source. In terms of nutrition density per penny, the four that really pull out from the pack are pinto beans, lentils, black beans, and kidney beans. And all that nutritional quality may have beneficial effects on excess body weight, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, inflammation, and oxidative stress, all major cardiovascular risk factors. So, do men and women who eat more beans tend to have less heart disease? Yes, suggesting that increasing legume intake may be an important part of a dietary approach to the primary prevention of coronary heart disease in the general population, meaning prevention of heart disease in the first place. But maybe those eating more bean burritos are just eating less beef burritos. They took that into account, controlling for meat intake, fruits and vegetables, and smoking, and exercise, and still the bean eaters appeared to be protected. Note the highest category here was eating legumes four more times a week. In my daily dozen, I recommend people eat legumes three times a day. In Costa Rica, they were able to find enough people eating beans every day, and so even after controlling for many of the same things, like intake of saturated fat and cholesterol, one bean serving a day was associated with a 38% reduction in the risk of heart attack. Yeah, but do you actually get to live longer too? Yes, apparently so, in 8% lower all-cause mortality. Again, after adjusting for other dietary factors. You can't control everything, though. I mean, you can't really prove cause and effect until you put it to the test. Randomized, controlled, interventional trials have found dietary bean intake does significantly reduce bad cholesterol levels. Dating back a half century to 1962, measure cholesterol levels at baseline, and then add beans to their diet, and then remove beans from their diet. And look, beans have a low glycemic index and saturated fat content and high in fiber, potassium, plant protein, each of which independently confers blood pressure lowering effects. But whether there's sufficient evidence to emphasize beans alone to lower blood pressure is unclear. Therefore, what we need is a systematic review and meta-analysis for controlled feeding trials, and here it is. And what they found is that beans do indeed lower blood pressure no matter where you start out. Okay, so beans may be able to prevent artery disease, but what about reversing it? Can the daily conception of beans other than soy reverse vascular impairment due to peripheral artery disease? Peripheral artery disease results from a decrease in blood flow to the legs due to a buildup of atherosclerotic plaque higher up. Yeah, soybeans may help, but what about other beans? So they had 26 individuals with peripheral artery disease consume one serving a day of a combination of beans, split peas, lentils, and chickpeas for eight weeks. Basically how you diagnose and follow the disease is with the ankle brachial index, which is just a ratio of blood pressure at your ankle compared to your arm. Once it dips below 0.9, that means you must have some kind of clogs in blood flow to your lower body. But eat some beans and you may get a significant increase, enough to push four of 26 participants up into the normal range after just eight weeks eating some beans. Now there was no control group, but people tend to get worse, not better. The researchers conclude a legume-rich diet can elicit major improvements in arterial function.