Where do beans come from?
For thousands of years, beans have been a staple food which was first domesticated more than 7,000 years ago in southern Mexico and Peru. In Mexico, the Indians developed black beans, white beans, and other color patterns and colors. In Peru (Andes), there was also a wide array of colors, but their colors were more bright and lively.
When were beans first domesticated?
The oldest cultivation of the common bean dated about 8,000 years ago and was found in Peru. Three other types of bean in this genus have been domesticated: Tepary beans – cultivated about 5,000 years ago in northwestern Mexico (the Sonoran Desert) and the southwestern United States.
What is the oldest type of Bean?
The oldest cultivation of the common bean dated about 8,000 years ago and was found in Peru. Three other types of bean in this genus have been domesticated: Tepary beans – cultivated about 5,000 years ago in northwestern Mexico (the Sonoran Desert) and the southwestern United States. Runner beans – cultivated in Mexico about 2,200 years ago.
Where do dry edible beans come from?
The dry edible bean commercial industry started in New York in the mid-1800s, during which time New York remained dominant in the industry. After New York, Michigan took the lead in the early 1900s, until North Dakota prevailed in the early 1990s, retaining its position as the largest producer of dry beans in the U.S. (32%).
What culture did beans come from?
Early History Cultivated beans have been found in the tombs of ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Domesticated fava beans (Vicia faba) were found in what is now northern Israel and were carbon-dated to about 10,000 years ago.
Where were beans first found?
Bean is one of the earliest cultivated plants. The oldest findings and proofs that we used beans for food are 9,000 years old and were found in Thailand. Wild variants of broad beans (fava beans) were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills.
Are beans indigenous to Europe?
The common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L., was introduced to Europe in the late Middle Ages from what are now Mexico, Central America and the Andes, bringing another cheap source of protein to long-established legumes like lentils and broad beans.
Where did pinto beans originally come from?
Like all beans, pinto beans are thought to have originated in the Peruvian highlands, and proliferated throughout the Americas via natives from Central and South America who used them as a trade commodity.
Which country eats the most beans?
Based on a comparison of 132 countries in 2019, India ranked the highest in bean consumption with 5,456 kt followed by Brazil and Mexico.
Who first ate beans?
Numerous ancient cultures depended on beans, including the Egyptians and classical Greeks, with a history of legume consumption going back more than 20,000 years in some Eastern cultures. A couple of older favorites in Europe were smallish, flat lentils, which were eaten in Greece as long as 13,000 years ago.
When did humans first eat beans?
The History of Dried Beans For thousands of years, beans have been a staple food which was first domesticated more than 7,000 years ago in southern Mexico and Peru.
What did Europeans eat before the Americas?
"Europe had a much richer variety of food than the Americas. We already had plenty of grains like wheat, rice, millet, rye and barley, so corn did not have that much impact, except to the poor. We also had domesticated animals, which we introduced to the Americas, plus plenty of fruits and vegetables."
What grain is native to North America?
Corn. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native.
Why are black beans healthier than pinto?
If we're being very strict, then black beans are slightly lower calorie, slightly lower fat, and just a smidgen higher protein. Black beans also contain a few fewer total carbs than pinto beans.
Are pinto beans native to the Americas?
In the high plateaus of Mexico, Native Americans domesticated pinto and red beans that had large seeds and prostrate architecture. But in lowland tropical regions of Central America, white and black beans with upright architecture and small seeds were grown.
Are pinto beans and kidney beans the same?
While kidney beans have a meaty, dense structure and slightly sweet flavour; Pinto beans have a creamy texture and more earthy flavour. However, despite their taste differences, you can substitute one for another. Due to the variation in size, time required for cooking these beans is different too.
When did beans come to America?
Their American origin is fixed by descriptions and references to finding them at many widely scattered points over the Americas about 1500 and soon after. The word "bean," like the word "vegetable," is indefinite. It is used to refer to the seeds of many different kinds of plants.
Did beans come from Korea?
In the case of beans, the most varieties of beans have been found throughout the Korean peninsula, so it has been proven that Korean peninsula, specifivally Manchuria, which was the former Goguryeo land, is the origin of beans.
What is the oldest bean?
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute and the Israel Antiquities Authority recently discovered the oldest known domesticated fava beans — about 10,200 years old — in the Galilee, pointing to a Neolithic diet rich in protein-rich legumes.
Where do beans grow in the world?
Currently, dry bean is an important agricultural crop in many countries, especially in those countries with high levels of consumption. The largest producing countries are Brazil, India, China, Burma and Mexico.
Terminology
The word "bean" and its Germanic cognates (e.g. German Bohne) have existed in common use in West Germanic languages since before the 12th century, referring to broad beans, chickpeas, and other pod-borne seeds. This was long before the New World genus Phaseolus was known in Europe.
Cultivation
Unlike the closely related pea, beans are a summer crop that needs warm temperatures to grow. Legumes are capable of nitrogen fixation and hence need less fertiliser than most plants. Maturity is typically 55–60 days from planting to harvest.
History
Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, also called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. In a form improved from naturally occurring types, they were grown in Thailand from the early seventh millennium BCE, predating ceramics.
Common genera and species of beans
Currently, the world gene banks hold about 40,000 bean varieties, although only a fraction are mass-produced for regular consumption.
Properties
Beans are high in protein, complex carbohydrates, folate, and iron. Beans also have significant amounts of fiber and soluble fiber, with one cup of cooked beans providing between nine and 13 grams of fiber. Soluble fiber can help lower blood cholesterol.
Flatulence
Many edible beans, including broad beans, navy beans, kidney beans and soybeans, contain oligosaccharides (particularly raffinose and stachyose ), a type of sugar molecule also found in cabbage. An anti-oligosaccharide enzyme is necessary to properly digest these sugar molecules.
Production
The production data for legumes are published by FAO in three categories:
Domesticate Properties
P. vulgaris beans come in an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, from pinto to pink to black to white. Despite this diversity, wild and domestic beans belong to the same species, as do all of the colorful varieties ("landraces") of beans, which are believed to be the result of a mixture of population bottlenecks and purposeful selection.
Centers Of Domestication
Scholarly research indicates that beans were domesticated in two places: the Andes mountains of Peru, and the Lerma-Santiago basin of Mexico.
Origins in Mesoamerica
In 2012, work by a group of geneticists led by Roberto Papa was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Bitocchi et al. 2012), making an argument for a Mesoamerican origin of all beans.
Dating the Domestication
While the exact date of domestication for beans has not yet been determined, wild landraces have been discovered in archaeological sites dated to 10,000 years ago in Argentina and 7,000 years ago in Mexico.
Sources
Angioi, SA. "Beans in Europe: origin and structure of the European landraces of Phaseolus vulgaris L." Rau D, Attene G, et al., National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, September 2010.
Description
Since 2003, global cultivation has ranged between 1.6 to 2.2 million planted hectares (4–5.4 million acres) producing 12–17.4 million tons per year.
Pea Domestication
Pisum sativa (Sugar Snap peas). Jenny Dettrick / Moment / Getty Images
Studying Peas
Peas were one of the first plants studied by geneticists, starting with Thomas Andrew Knight in the 1790s, not to mention the famous studies by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s. But, interestingly enough, mapping the pea genome has lagged behind other crops because it has such a large and complex genome.
Selected Sources
Abbo, S., A. Gopher, and S. Lev-Yadun. " The Domestication of Crop Plants ." Encyclopedia of Applied Plant Sciences (Second Edition). Eds. Murray, Brian G., and Denis J. Murphy. Oxford: Academic Press, 2017. 50–54. Print.
Overview
History
Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, and still are today.
Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants in history. Broad beans, also called fava beans, are in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, and were first gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. An early cultivated fo…
Terminology
The word "bean" and its Germanic cognates (e.g. German Bohne) have existed in common use in West Germanic languages since before the 12th century, referring to broad beans, chickpeas, and other pod-borne seeds. This was long before the New World genus Phaseolus was known in Europe. After Columbian-era contact between Europe and the Americas, use of the word was extended to pod-borne seeds of Phaseolus, such as the common bean and the runner bean, and the related ge…
Cultivation
Unlike the closely related pea, beans are a summer crop that needs warm temperatures to grow. Legumes are capable of nitrogen fixation and hence need less fertiliser than most plants. Maturity is typically 55–60 days from planting to harvest. As the bean pods mature, they turn yellow and dry up, and the beans inside change from green to their mature colour. As a vine, bean plants need ex…
Common genera and species
Currently, the world gene banks hold about 40,000 bean varieties, although only a fraction are mass-produced for regular consumption.
Most of the foods we call "beans", "legumes", "lentils" and "pulses" belong to the same family, Fabaceae ("leguminous" plants), but are from different genera and species, native to different homelands and distributed worldwide depending o…
Properties
Beans are high in protein, complex carbohydrates, folate, and iron. Beans also have significant amounts of fiber and soluble fiber, with one cup of cooked beans providing between nine and 13 grams of fiber. Soluble fiber can help lower blood cholesterol.
The Canadian government recommends that adults have up to two (female), and three (male) servings. 3/4 cup of cooked beans provide one serving.
Flatulence
Many edible beans, including broad beans, navy beans, kidney beans and soybeans, contain oligosaccharides (particularly raffinose and stachyose), a type of sugar molecule also found in cabbage. An anti-oligosaccharide enzyme is necessary to properly digest these sugar molecules. As a normal human digestive tract does not contain any anti-oligosaccharide enzymes, consumed oligosaccharides are typically digested by bacteria in the large intestine. This digestion process p…
See also
• Baked beans
• Jelly beans
• Mexican jumping bean
• List of bean soups
• List of edible seeds
Terminology
Cultivation
- Time for planting beans is between late spring and end of the summer. They grow in climbing plants or bushes. Seeds grow in pods that are between 10 and 20 cm long and are at first soft and sweet only to get hard and dry as they mature. Different variants of beans are eaten at the various stages of maturity.
Origin
- Bean is one of the earliest cultivated plants. The oldest findings and proofs that we used beans for food are 9,000 years old and were found in Thailand. Wild variants of broad beans (fava beans) were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. Beans were also found in the tombs of the kings of the ancient Egypt where they were left as the...
Toxicity
- Beans are rich in fibers, protein, complex carbohydrates, folate, and iron but some of them, like red and white kidney beans, also have toxins while they are raw. They have lectin phytohaemagglutinin which can cause poisoning with symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea from as little as five raw beans. This toxin can be removed by boiling the beans for at le…
Functions
- Bean also contains oligosaccharides (raffinose and stachyose) which are digested by bacteria in the large intestine which results in flatulence-causing gases.
Preparation
- Different places prepare beans in a variety of ways. For instance, in China (more precisely in Sichuan), broad beans are mixed with soybeans and chili peppers and fermented into a paste called doubanjiang. In Dalmatia, a part of Croatia, people prepare a traditional dish made of stuffed artichokes with fava beans and peas. Greeks also cook stew of artichokes and fava bea…