March 21, 2023
Bronwen Evans looks at new initiatives in pulse flour and their potential to revolutionize pulse consumption levels in the UK - as well as make for healthier populations.
Dr. Cathrina Edwards
Bread, in its many forms, is one of the world’s favorite foods and holds an extra special place in the hearts of those living in the UK. A whopping 96% of people in the UK eat bread, with 90% of these having a preference for white bread. In fact, the average Brit will eat, on average, 18,304 sandwiches in their lifetime.
The wheat flour used in white bread, though delicious and versatile, is pretty low in nutrients and often high in sugar. The wheat grain itself isn’t to blame but when it is refined during production all the fiber and 25% of its protein are removed.
However, two projects have emerged in recent years that have the potential to transform the nutritional landscape of white bread. How? By adding in pulse flours.
The ‘Raising the Pulse’ project from researchers at The University of Reading, and innovations in ‘cellular chickpea flour’ from King’s College London and The Quadram Institute are both seeking to transform the British diet for the better - and in a way that’s convenient for both producers and consumers. The first by enriching traditional white bread with fava beans and the second by completely replacing the wheat flour with cellular chickpea flour.
Both fava beans and chickpeas are high in vitamins and minerals including iron, fiber, protein and magnesium, making them the perfect ingredients to level up the healthiness of white bread and improve consumer diets without requiring considerable change.
Professor Julie Lovegrove led the research on ‘Raising the Pulse’ which began in January 2023 and aims to encourage British consumers to switch from standard white bread to bread containing fava beans. She said at the time:
“We had to think laterally: What do most people eat, and how can we improve their nutrition without them having to change their diets? The obvious answer is bread…”
‘Raising the Pulse’ is a research program funded by the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of their ‘Transforming UK Food Systems’ initiative.
“What do most people eat, and how can we improve their nutrition without them having to change their diets? The obvious answer is bread…”
Many white bread brands contain soy, which the project team found to be easily replaceable with fava beans - a key component of the sustainability narrative since fava beans can be grown in Britain, reducing the dependence on soy imports.
This project’s research notes that out of all grain legumes, the fava bean has “the highest yield potential and nitrogen-fixation rates in the United Kingdom and globally”.
Currently, fava beans are mainly used as an ingredient for animal feed in the UK with small volumes of production being exported to Egypt. The ‘Raising the Pulse’ project seeks to improve the growing, harvesting, and milling stages of production to further increase the nutritional and sustainable qualities of fava beans, and hopes to motivate farmers to use land currently allocated to wheat, for growing fava beans instead.
And fava beans are not the only pulse capable of boosting the nutrition in white bread. The King’s College London and Quadram Institute cellular chickpea flour project, which consisted of a study carried out alongside the development of a new pulse ingredient called PulseON, went a step further than ‘Raising the Pulse’. Instead of merely adding pulse flour into white bread, it looked at substituting it completely for a new type of flour called cellular or whole cell chickpea flour.
As part of the research, the team worked on an alternative milling process for pulses that keeps the cells intact and makes the flour nutritionally superior to its traditionally milled counterpart. Cellular flour maintains the dietary fibre structure of whole pulses - including the nutritionally beneficial cell wall - and can therefore enrich flour-based foods.
We spoke to Dr. Cathrina Edwards, senior author of the study about the nutritional significance of the substitution:
“Eating pulses is associated with beneficial effects on health. Some of those benefits seem to originate from the unique dietary fiber structure of pulses, more specifically the plant cell intactness…The starch and protein (source of calories) are naturally encapsulated by the cell wall fiber and therefore released more slowly during digestion.”
Researchers undertook this study in an effort to record how swapping wheat flour for cellular chickpea flour could affect fullness, hormone regulation, and insulin and blood sugar levels. The results? Pretty positive, Dr. Edwards continues:
“It was particularly encouraging to see that swapping white wheat flour for cellular chickpea flour resulted in such large effects on glucose, insulin, and fullness-promoting hormones GLP-1 and PYY, while still producing a bread that looked and tasted fairly similar to normal white bread.”
Hormones GLP-1 and PYY are gut-secreted hormones that work against diabetes and obesity. This is good news for the over 25% of UK adults struggling with obesity and 4.9 million living with type 2 diabetes. Although studies have only involved healthy participants so far, Dr. Edwards believes that the inclusion of cellular chickpea flour in white bread could be beneficial for those living with type 2 diabetes.
It’s hardly news that pulses are healthy but leveraging them to help populations suffering from disease is headline stuff. The ‘Raising the Pulse’ fava beans also have their part to play in fighting major diseases. Substituting some of the refined carbohydrates in white bread with zero-cholestrol fava beans can help large numbers of the UK population suffering from high cholesterol.
Could these projects make for a future in which white bread becomes a health food? With 3 million people in Britain at risk of or suffering from malnutrition, giving one staple food the ability to fight diabetes, cholesterol and obesity, as well as contributing to better overall nutrition could be a game changing move.
When it comes to developments, it’s been a good couple of months for fava beans. In early March a team of scientists succeeded in sequencing the fava bean genome for the first time. The achievement, led by the University of Reading, England, Aarhus University, Denmark, and the University of Helsinki, Finland, represents sizable progress in increasing the nutritional and sustainable qualities of fava beans.
Professor Donal O’Sullivan led the University of Reading team and explained the aim of the research:
“We want to produce beans that are higher in essential amino acids as well as lower in antinutrients, such as phytate, which binds micronutrients and reduces absorption. Having the genome sequence will accelerate this process considerably.”
Unlocking barriers around gene-editing is key to developing pulses that are increasingly capable of helping to mitigate climate change, food insecurity and malnutrition the world over. Yet low consumption across the globe remains a major issue for unleashing the full potential of pulses. Can innovations in pulse flour be part of the solution?
Dr. Edwards belives it can: “We believe this new ingredient can make it easier for food producers to improve the nutritional quality of everyday foods, making it easier for consumers to eat good quality carbohydrates and dietary fibre.”
“We believe this new ingredient can make it easier for food producers to improve the nutritional quality of everyday foods, making it easier for consumers to eat good quality carbohydrates and dietary fibre.”
Inexperience and misinformation around cooking and consuming pulses, sometimes known as ’bean hesitancy’, is common in the UK, meaning encouraging people to eat fava beans has typically been a challenge. The ‘Raising the Pulse’ study notes that changing consumer behavior toward new diet preferences can be tough:
“Nudging people to make better food choices is challenging, as factors including affordability, convenience, and taste often take priority over the achievement of health and environmental benefits.”
UK Research and Innovation indicates that initiatives seeking to enrich everyday foods are imperative in convincing food manufacturers to use pulses in satisfying consumer demand for UK-grown, healthy foods. It conveys that the majority of the population will not significantly increase their pulse consumption unless pulses are seamlessly incorporated into “familiar looking and tasting, economic and convenient staple foods, such as bread.”
Sometimes, the answer involves doing something new with something old. Whole pulses have always been nutritious, low cost and environmentally-friendly; what these two new projects do is add convenience, familiarity and accessibility into the mix. The result? It looks like bread, it tastes like bread - but take the pulse of this particular bread and you’ll find it significantly higher than usual.
Disclaimer: The opinions or views expressed in this publication are those of the authors or quoted persons. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Global Pulse Confederation or its members.
