The New Complete Book of Food
What Happens When You Cook This Food
When lima beans are heated in water, their cellulose and lignin-stiffened cells absorb
moisture, swell, and eventually rupture, releasing the vitamins, minerals, proteins, starch,
and fiber inside. Cooking also makes lima beans safer by inactivating their antinutrients
and hemagglutinins.How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Drying. Drying reduces the moisture and concentrates the calories and nutrients in lima
beans.
Canning and freezing. Frozen fresh lima beans contain about the same amounts of vitamins
and minerals as fresh beans; canned lima beans are lower in vitamins but usually contain
more sodium in the form of added salt.Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Lower risk of some birth defects. Up to two of every 1,000 babies born in the United States
each year may have cleft palate or a neural tube (spinal cord) defect due to their mothers’
not having gotten adequate amounts of folate during pregnancy. The current RDA for folate
is 180 mcg for a woman and 200 mcg for a man, but FDA now recommends 400 mcg for
a woman who is or may become pregnant. Taking a folate supplement before becoming
pregnant and continuing through the first two months of pregnancy reduces the risk of cleft
palate; taking folate through the entire pregnancy reduces the risk of neural tube defects.
Possible lower risk of heart attack. In the spring of 1998, an analysis of data from the
records for more than 80,000 women enrolled in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study at
Harvard School of Public Health/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, demonstrated
that a diet providing more than 400 mcg folate and 3 mg vitamin B 6 daily, either from
food or supplements, might reduce a woman’s risk of heart attack by almost 50 percent.
Although men were not included in the study, the results were assumed to apply to them
as well.
However, data from a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in December 2006 called this theory into question. Researchers at Tulane Univer-
sity examined the results of 12 controlled studies in which 16,958 patients with preexisting
cardiovascular disease were given either folic acid supplements or placebos (“look-alike” pills
with no folic acid) for at least six months. The scientists, who found no reduction in the risk
of further heart disease or overall death rates among those taking folic acid, concluded that
further studies will be required to ascertain whether taking folic acid supplements reduces
the risk of cardiovascular disease.
To reduce the levels of serum cholesterol. The gums and pectins in dried beans appear to lower
the level of cholesterol in the blood. There are currently two theories to explain how this