Green beans - These are immature fruits with soft young leaves. Many athletes, supporters of a healthy diet and an active lifestyle know about the benefits and harms of green beans. The shoots of the legume plant help control the condition of the figure, maintain immunity and contribute to the entry of a number of useful components into the body.
- Composition and calorie content of green beans
- What are the benefits of green beans?
- Benefits after treatment
- Frozen
- Canned
- Boiled
- Features of use
- For children
- Nursing mothers
- Pregnant
- Harm and contraindications
- Application in cosmetology
- Application in dietetics
- How to use it in cooking
- Traditional medicine recipes
Composition and calorie content of green beans
The basis of the benefit that the product brings to the body is the presence of bioactive substances in the composition.
Green beans contain vitamins and minerals, in particular:
- ascorbic and folic acids;
- methylated phenols;
- nicotinamide;
- lactoflavin;
- macro- and microelements (sodium, calcium, silicon, phosphorus, iodine, iron).
The combination of different components allows you to eat bean pods not only to get rid of hunger, but also to improve your health. In the absence of medical contraindications, you can include dishes with the addition of legumes in your daily diet.
100 g of product contains 24-32 kcal. Of these, the amount of fat is 0.3 g, protein – 2.5 g, carbohydrates – 3.1 g. The priority share of the product mass is fiber and moisture.
What are the benefits of green beans?
The main benefit of bean sprouts is its ability to repel harmful toxins and impurities from the atmosphere when grown.
The substances in the product have a positive and comprehensive effect on the human body and are important for the health of any person.
It is worth noting the following beneficial properties of the pods:
- The presence of iron microparticles helps improve the functioning of the respiratory system.
- Green beans are beneficial for women because they balance hormonal levels.
- Regular consumption activates the healing process for various infectious intestinal diseases.
- For men, the main beneficial properties are to improve potency.
- Soluble fiber is indispensable in the fight against excess weight and diabetes.
- The product helps with feelings of weakness, chronic fatigue, stress and migraines.
- Carbohydrates supplied with legumes fill the body with energy, help increase efficiency and active life.
By correlating the benefits and harms of the product, we can make an unambiguous conclusion that with moderate consumption it is possible to have an extremely positive effect on your body.
Benefits after treatment
The calorie content of green beans does not depend significantly on the variety and degree of maturity, but can increase significantly as a result of further processing. Since the product can be eaten only after heat treatment, which is necessary to neutralize indigestible particles, it is important to take care of the preservation of beneficial characteristics. When frying the pods, 100 g of product will contain 175 kcal, and when stewing - 136.
Considering that in addition to the main ingredient, the dishes include a number of others, the total calorie content and benefits for the human body may vary.
Frozen
To extend the shelf life of the product, you can freeze bean pods. To do this, they are thoroughly washed, cut into small pieces, dried and placed in containers for freezing. The storage period increases to six months. The freezing method does not affect the medicinal properties of legumes, and the benefits of consumption remain the same. In addition, cold processing destroys bacteria and dangerous toxins from the surface of the fruit.
Canned
The benefits of consuming canned green beans are due to the preservation of a key portion of the vitamin and mineral complex. The nutritional value of the canned product is only 16 kcal per 100. After processing, the product has a positive effect on the circulatory system due to the formation of red blood cells.Periodically eating canned beans also helps reduce the amount of sugar in the body.
Boiled
Short-term boiling of green shoots preserves up to 80% of all bioactive components. At the same time, due to the change in the properties of carbohydrates, the number of calories almost doubles. The main advantage of boiled beans is that even a short stay of the product in boiled water kills all microbes and cleans the surface of the beans. Boiling the shoots is the most common processing method. During the boiling process, toxic substances are eliminated, which allows the product to be safely consumed.
Features of use
If you want to add green beans to your diet, you need to take into account several features of using the product. This is necessary to extract maximum benefits and prevent negative effects on the body. When thinking about adding pods to the diet, it is important to take into account the individual specifics of the body, the presence of diseases and susceptibility to a given crop.
For children
Green beans are extremely beneficial for any growing organism. The product is necessary for children, but only if there are no problems with the gastrointestinal tract. Compared to ordinary beans, the pods are more actively digested by the body and do not provoke an increased release of gases.
You can add the product to your diet from the age of 10 months.
For children, it is recommended to thoroughly boil and grind legumes so that the beans are better digested. You can simply consume the pods in grated form, or add them to baby vegetable purees or make soup based on them.
Nursing mothers
Legumes are often excluded from the list of permitted vegetable crops during breastfeeding, as they can lead to bloating and colic in the baby. But green beans have the ability to increase the amount of breast milk without creating a danger to the baby. By adding a product to the diet, you can add variety to the daily nutrition of a nursing mother and saturate the milk with a complex of healthy vitamins.
Pregnant
Since green shoots contain a lot of nutritional components and are not considered heavy food, they are recommended to be added to the diet of pregnant women. In addition, beans improve the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract, kidneys and liver, which is most important when preparing for the birth of a child. At the same time, it is worth using the product in limited quantities, avoiding abuse.
Harm and contraindications
Like any member of the legume family, green beans have a number of contraindications for consumption.
Dishes containing pods may cause pain and side effects in people with the following diseases:
- gastritis with high acidity;
- pancreatitis in the acute stage;
- internal inflammation and unstable bowel function;
- development of stomach ulcers.
It is important to be careful when consuming the product not only during the chronic course of the above diseases, but also during the remission stage, since legumes can lead to severe gas formation and stimulation of the digestive process.
If you experience pain or discomfort after eating beans, you should temporarily abandon the product and consult a doctor.
The main harm from eating beans is their improper preparation.Freshly picked green pods should not be eaten, as the raw product contains the dangerous substance pheazine. Only heat treatment helps eliminate all toxic substances and preserve beneficial characteristics.
Application in cosmetology
In home cosmetology, the product has not received much demand, since the structure of the beans requires pre-treatment to create care products. At the same time, the fruits, softened to a homogeneous mass, have an indispensable effect on dehydrated and flaking skin. Masks made from pods help fill the skin with nutrients and tighten the face.
Decoctions of green pods are often used for hair care. Natural decoctions for hair make it healthy, soft, silky, and also prevent the formation of dandruff and promote active growth.
Application in dietetics
Many nutritionists recommend including beans in your diet to effectively combat excess weight. In addition to the fact that it is a low-calorie product, as a result of its consumption, the body activates the process of inhibiting the absorption of a number of carbohydrates and blocking starchy foods. Various types of beans for weight loss can reduce appetite by activating the production of the hormone cholecystokinin, which is involved in metabolism.
Green beans should be added to the diet, as they contain the largest amount of mineral and vitamin components. The product helps to carry out painless and active cleansing of the body from harmful substances and accumulations. Systematic adherence to a diet using green fruits helps to constantly stay in good shape and control body weight.
How to use it in cooking
The use of young pods in the preparation of many dishes helps to add variety to their taste. Due to their structure, beans are suitable for canning, preparing stews and many soups. You can use shoots as a separate side dish, in combination with meat and fish, or as an ingredient in vegetable salads. To add the pods to various dishes, it is recommended to freeze and store them in the refrigerator for use at any time.
To eliminate toxins from the product, the cooking time should be at least 1.5 hours. After this treatment, the green crop can be added without risk to any dishes.
One of the most popular culinary recipes using green beans is garlic salad.
To prepare you need:
- Wash the beans and divide several pods into 3 equal parts. Cook in boiling water for 5 minutes, adding a small pinch of salt. Immediately after cooking, drain the water and pour the ingredient into a colander.
- Squeeze a couple of cloves of garlic through a press. Fry the resulting mass together with beans in oil, season with soy sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
- Serve the finished dish with meat or fish.
There is also a simple recipe for cooking in a slow cooker; it involves the following sequence of actions:
- Cut the pods into small slices. Grate the carrots on a fine grater, cut the onions and tomatoes into large cubes.
- Start the multicooker in baking mode, add vegetable oil, add carrots and onions. Cook for 5 minutes, then pour in the tomato paste and mix thoroughly.
- Add beans and chopped tomatoes to the resulting mass, add half a glass of clean water and bay leaf to the multicooker. Start the extinguishing mode for half an hour.
When using the product for culinary purposes, the most important thing is not to consume it raw. The surface of untreated fruits contains a toxin that can cause poisoning or other side effects.
Traditional medicine recipes
Green, fragile fruits have become widespread in folk therapy for the treatment of many diseases. Beans have a beneficial effect on the body in case of pancreatitis, as well as in the fight against rheumatism, dropsy, and diabetes.
In home medicine, it is very easy to prepare tea from green legume leaves. Like many decoctions, tea is a diuretic for edema, kidney inflammation, gout and bladder diseases. Drinking green bean tea also helps with gastritis. To prepare the solution, you need to mix 1 tablespoon of chopped bean leaves with ¼ liter of cold water. The mixture requires boiling for 3-5 minutes, after which it is enough to strain the tea and drink it 2-3 times daily, regardless of meals.
Tea based on pods, just like oil, can be single-component or with the addition of other medicinal ingredients and plants.
All folk recipes should be used while following a diet or against the background of glucose-lowering therapy. As an independent method of therapy, solutions from the pods are necessary exclusively in the initial stages of the development of diabetes mellitus.
Traditional therapy also involves the use of juice squeezed from green beans, which is used to treat diseases of the pancreas and intestines. The juice squeezed from the leaves contains a high content of carotene, B vitamins, folic and ascorbic acid, and plant estrogens. Drinking bean juice in adulthood is especially useful for maintaining normal hormonal balance, eliminating wrinkles, and smoothing the skin.