Defining the role of pulse grains in cancer prevention (824.10)

Pulse crops, including dry beans, dry peas, chickpeas, and lentils, are grain legumes that serve as staple food crops for populations around the world. Since ancient times, pulses have been combined with cereal grains, primarily wheat, rice, or corn, or with tubers such as potato or cassava to provide a balanced source of protein and carbohydrate and a nutritionally adequate diet when combined with seed oils, fruit and vegetables. In this setting, the established ratio of cereal grains to pulses to meet nutritional requirements is 2:1; however, over the last 60 years both production and consumption patterns, globally, have changed to 8:1. One consequence of these changes has been a marked but largely unappreciated exclusion of pulse crops from the diet. In this study, the effects of one type of pulse crop, common bean, was evaluated in a dual model for experimentally induced colon and breast cancer in female Sprague Dawley rats injected with both 1‐methyl‐1‐nitrosourea and azoxymethane. Specific varieties of cooked, freeze‐dried bean were incorporated into a purified diet and fed during the post initiation phase of the disease process. Depending on common bean variety, the occurrence of both aberrant crypt foci in the colon and mammary carcinomas were inhibited when beans were included in the diet compared to the control without bean. Magnitudes of inhibition ranged from 25 to 50%. Potential contributions of various components of cooked bean are considered including content of fiber and various phytochemicals. The lack of significant amounts of common bean and other pulse grains in the US diet may represent an underexploited public health opportunity especially in the context of re‐establishing complementary patterns of consuming pulse grains and cereal crops. Grant Funding Source : PHS R01‐ CA172375