Abstract:
In recent decades, scarcity of available resources, population growth and the
widening in the consumption of processed foods and of animal origin have
made the current food system unsustainable. High-income countries have
shifted towards food consumption patterns which is causing an increasingly
process of environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources,
with the increased incidence of malnutrition due to excess (obesity and
non-communicable disease) and due to chronic food deprivation. An urgent
challenge is, therefore, to move towards more healthy and sustainable eating
choices and reorientating food production and distribution to obtain a human
and planetary health benefit. In this regard, legumes represent a less expensive
source of nutrients for low-income countries, and a sustainable healthier option
than animal-based proteins in developed countries. Although legumes are
the basis of many traditional dishes worldwide, and in recent years they have
also been used in the formulation of new food products, their consumption
is still scarce. Common beans, which are among the most consumed pulses
worldwide, have been the focus of many studies to boost their nutritional
properties, to find strategies to facilitate cultivation under biotic/abiotic stress,
to increase yield, reduce antinutrients contents and rise the micronutrient level.
The versatility of beans could be the key for the increase of their consumption,
as it allows to include them in a vast range of food preparations, to create new
formulations and to reinvent traditional legume-based recipes with optimal
nutritional healthy characteristics.
