Are Beans Actually Good For Your Heart?


Bean counting we can get behind. CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture/Flickr
THE BENEFITS OF TOOTING YOUR OWN HORN
Are Beans Actually Good For Your Heart?

   by Dan Nosowitz
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 Mar 17 2015, 5:49 PM
 
​In the whisper-down-the-lane evolution of schoolyard chants, I grew up hearing the famous legume-based one beginning with “Beans, beans, the musical fruit.” The alternate, and much more correct, version begins “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart.”

The version I remember is a collision of lies; I can let the description of beans as musical go, a bit of poetic license, but I refuse to believe that the restrictions of perfect rhyme were so tight as to force the author to identify a bean as a fruit. The alternate version is delightful; it promotes cardiac health in place of telling children taxonomic lies about produce.

In the interest of confirming the facts of alternate version, hopefully cementing it as the canonic version, and embarrassing myself by talking about farts with someone who has a medical degree, I called up Katherine Zeratsky, a