With partial funding support from Pulse Canada and others, this study has built a body of data to support a label health claim that even a small serving of beans can lower your blood sugar.

“A serving of beans, instead of low-fibre starchy foods such as corn, rice, potatoes or macaroni, results in reduced blood sugar after a meal.”

Imagine the impact of these words, or something close to them, on the label of a Canadian food product. At a glance, consumers concerned about high blood sugar could see that beans will deliver a benefit.

As Dan Ramdath explains, Health Canada requires a solid body of credible data to support the claim. The reduction in blood sugar must be significant — at least 20% compared to the alternative — and a minimum dose of beans to achieve this effect must be identified.

“Lots of work has been done on the blood glucose lowering effect of beans,” said Ramdath, Senior Research Scientist (Nutrition) with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Guelph, ON. “But there are still gaps we needed to address in order to get the health claim.”

In 2015-16, Ramdath led a study to determine the blood sugar (also known as glycemic) impact of consuming six different types of beans, compared to commonly consumed starchy foods like corn, macaroni, rice and potato.

A smaller serving size

“Our methodology was very simple,” Ramdath said. “We had between 12 and 24 healthy volunteers involved in the study. They came in 10 times and consumed randomly a half-cup or quarter-cup serving of six different beans, as well as the four starchier alternatives.”

An overnight fast ensured that any effect seen in blood sugar could be linked to the foods consumed that morning. Finger-prick blood tests were performed on each volunteer seven times in the two hours following their test meal.

To support a health claim, it was necessary to find a 20% improvement. As it happened, consuming one of the six types of beans resulted in blood sugar that was 32% to 65% lower than with the corn, macaroni, rice and potato. What’s more, the half-cup and quarter-cup bean servings performed roughly comparably in terms of glycemic impact.

Based on this study, Ramdath sees a data set that should be highly compelling for Health Canada as it considers a blood sugar health claim for beans.

This is great news for Canadian consumers, who may soon have an easy way to choose beans on scientific health evidence. As Ramdath sees it, the news is also good for anyone who grows beans for a living.

“If I was speaking to bean growers, I’d say we found that even a small amount of beans makes a huge difference,” he said. “Keep growing them, and we will continue to find ways to improve the health of Canadians and the economic vitality of the pulse-growing sector. And a big thank you to growers for financially supporting research that is critical to advancing a pulse health claim.”

 

Project at a glance

Project title:                Glycemic impact of selected Ontario beans: comparison with corn, macaroni, rice and potatoes

Project lead:                Dan Ramdath, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Total value of project:    $16,000

Start date:                   2014

Completion date:        2016