Effect of Soaking and Cooking on the Oligosaccharides and Lectins in Red Kidney Beans (phaseolus Vulgaris L.)

INTRODUCTION Common beans {Phaseolus vulgaris), owing to their nutrient-dense attributes, offer a potential to be developed as multiple-use products. However, in general, the consumption of beans has rarely gone beyond traditionally processed bean products and their uses. The reason for this stagnancy in the growth of processed bean consumption may be linked to 2 antinutritional factors found in common beans: 1) mainly due to the presence of flatulencecausing oligosaccharides, namely raffinose and stachyose (Silva-Queiroz et al., 2002), and 2) to a lesser extent, the presence of toxic lectins (Sharon and Lis 2002) that have been associated with food poisoning. Thus, any newly developed bean product would find acceptability among consumers only if these negative characteristics of common beans were minimized or eliminated. Pre-soaking beans at suitable conditions for oligosaccharides reduction and then cooking them at temperatures above 80 ^C for elimination of lectins are necessary to produce a safe bean product. The objective of the present study was to see the effect of soaking beans at an elevated temperature and cooking for short time on hydration, oligosaccharides and lectin content.