article · Frontiers in Nutrition
Current global food systems are becoming increasingly unsustainable because of population growth, resource depletion, and high consumption of processed and animal-derived foods. These eating habits contribute to environmental degradation as well as forms of malnutrition such as obesity, chronic food deprivation, and non-communicable diseases. Legumes offer an affordable nutrient source in lower-income settings and a sustainable alternative to animal protein in higher-income nations. Despite their nutritional value and historical role in traditional dishes, overall legume consumption remains limited. Common beans, among the most popular pulses globally, have attracted targeted research to enhance crop yields, improve resilience against environmental and biological stresses, reduce antinutrient levels, and increase essential micronutrients. Their culinary versatility supports adoption into modern food formulations and updated traditional recipes, presenting practical opportunities to encourage broader dietary intake and healthier eating habits.
Shifting dietary choices towards sustainable options is critical for human health and environmental preservation. Promoting crops such as common beans addresses malnutrition, helps combat non-communicable diseases, and lessens the environmental pressure linked with animal farming. Because beans are versatile and affordable, understanding their nutritional and culinary value can support healthier, more resilient food systems across both developed and developing regions.
The abstract points to applications in food manufacturing and product formulation, specifically incorporating common beans into novel food items and reformulated traditional recipes. Food processors and ingredient manufacturers could utilise versatile bean varieties bred for lower antinutrient content, elevated micronutrients, and resilience. As the text reflects broad nutritional and crop research findings rather than a specific validated prototype, applications remain at an early to applied development stage across the commercial food sector.
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In recent decades, scarcity of available resources, population growth and the widening in the consumption of processed foods and of animal origin have made the current food system unsustainable. High-income countries have shifted towards food consumption patterns which is causing an increasingly process of environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources, with the increased incidence of malnutrition due to excess (obesity and non-communicable disease) and due to chronic food deprivation. An urgent challenge is, therefore, to move towards more healthy and sustainable eating choices and reorientating food production and distribution to obtain a human and planetary health benefit. In this regard, legumes represent a less expensive source of nutrients for low-income countries, and a sustainable healthier option than animal-based proteins in developed countries. Although legumes are the basis of many traditional dishes worldwide, and in recent years they have also been used in the formulation of new food products, their consumption is still scarce. Common beans, which are among the most consumed pulses worldwide, have been the focus of many studies to boost their nutritional properties, to find strategies to facilitate cultivation under biotic/abiotic stress, to increase yield, reduce antinutrients contents and rise the micronutrient level. The versatility of beans could be the key for the increase of their consumption, as it allows to include them in a vast range of food preparations, to create new formulations and to reinvent traditional legume-based recipes with optimal nutritional healthy characteristics.
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DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1385232
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