HOUSTON – March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and if you didn’t already know, poor diet is one of the major risk factors. And in a new study revealed by MD Anderson, doctors examined how beans may help prevent this deadly cancer.
The majority of participants in the study were colon cancer survivors and some had a history of cancerous polyps. The study also revealed, that in those patients who ate a cup of navy beans daily, there was an improved microbiome, which is associated with cancer prevention and improved treatment outcomes.
By adding just one cup a day of beans to your typical diet, nothing else, not even additional exercise, strictly by eating beans, MD Anderson Dr. Carrie Daniel-MacDougall found in just four weeks, there were already significant changes.
What changed?
Daniel-MacDougall said the good bacteria crowd out the bad and improve immune and inflammatory markers, as well as interactions between the gut and liver. This type of improvement is important, not just for colorectal cancer risk, but all cancer risk.
“We saw a different immune and inflammatory markers, shifts in different, other blood markers that we measured in the study that are directly associated with metabolic diseases like metabolic syndrome, interactions between the gut and the liver that are important, and not just colorectal cancer risk, but other things that are important for cancer, such as the immune system and how our body regulates inflammation so that it doesn’t get out of control and promote cancer,” Dr. Daniel-MacDougall explained.
How do you prepare it?
The study showed there was no difference in how the beans were prepared. For example, some of the trial participants ate it plain.
Some made more elaborate meals with beans cooked inside, and some made chili, while others just ate beans and rice.
The point is, everybody ate the beans differently and all came to the same conclusion.
“We found that in adding the beans, they significantly improved their gut health, and the way that we saw that was through an increase in overall diversity, which means an increase in the different type and balance of bacteria that lives within the gut. We saw specific increases in what we consider healthy bacteria that really keep the overall health of the gut microbiome community,” Daniel-MacDougall said.
The study was done specifically with navy beans, however, researchers say the benefits could be seen with any type of bean.
“I would say for improving overall gut health, one should consider a range of different prebiotic foods and even a range of different legumes,” Daniel-MacDougall said. “So, beans are under this overall family of legumes, and that includes things that maybe people prefer to eat over what we call the dry beans (like navy beans, black beans, pinto beans.) Legumes also include peas, lentils, chickpeas, lima beans, black-eyed peas. You know, hopefully, there’s something under that umbrella that you would like to add to your diet because those all have high fiber, high protein, and vegetable-based protein, which the gut microbiome also likes to eat.”