Facts for Kids

People have grown beans for thousands of years. In parts of Thailand, people farmed beans as early as about 7000 years ago, and in Europe and in Peru people were planting beans by about 4000–3000 years ago. Archaeologists have found beans in old homes and even placed with the dead in ancient tombs, which shows beans mattered in daily life and rituals.

In the Americas, farmers often used the Three Sisters planting method: maize (corn), beans, and squash grew together. The corn gave a pole for the beans to climb, the beans helped the soil, and the squash covered the ground to keep weeds away.

Beans are the seeds of plants in the pea, or legume, family. People and animals eat many kinds of beans. Some are fresh and soft, like green beans, and others are dried and hard—dried beans are called pulses. Beans are a good source of protein, fiber, and vitamins, so they help bodies grow and stay healthy.

Farmers grow beans in fields and gardens because they can feed many people and animals. Beans also help the soil: many legumes make their own nitrogen, an important plant food, so planting beans can improve the ground for the next crop.

Lectin (phytohaemagglutinin) is a natural toxin found in some raw beans, and red kidney beans are one of the most likely to have it. Eating even a little raw or undercooked bean can cause strong stomachache, vomiting, and diarrhea. The good news is that proper cooking destroys the toxin: beans should be boiled vigorously for at least ten minutes. Slow cookers may not get hot enough to make the bean safe, and canned beans are already cooked so they are safe to eat.

Another risk comes from beansprouts, which are young shoots made from beans. If sprouts are eaten raw they can carry harmful bacteria. Cooking sprouts well and handling them carefully helps prevent these foodborne illnesses.

Doctors and poison experts say bean poisoning is not always well known or reported, so cases can be missed. For example, health services have warned that dangers are not only from red beans. People have learned other ways to make beans safe: in parts of Africa, people use fermentation to change beans so they are easier to digest and less likely to make someone sick.

Beans also contain things called antinutrients (like phytic acid) that can make it harder for the body to use some minerals and vitamins, but cooking and fermentation lower them. Tiny sugars called oligosaccharides can cause gas in the belly for some people, and an enzyme called alpha-galactosidase can help break those sugars down. Beans are part of many cultures, and their reputation for causing flatulence even shows up in children's songs and jokes.

Legumes is the plant family that includes beans. Beans are special because tiny helpful bacteria live on their roots and turn air nitrogen into food the plant can use. This helps the soil, so beans are often grown in fields to improve ground for the next crop.

Most beans are planted in warm weather and are ready to harvest in about 55–60 days. Some bean plants grow as climbing vines that need poles or a trellis, while other types are called bush beans and stay short, making all their pods around the same time.

Protein is a nutrient that helps build and repair the body, and beans are a good source of it. Dry beans have a lot of protein (about 20–25%), and soybeans are even richer. That is why people use beans as a meat substitute in burgers, falafels, and stews.

Beans can be served whole or mashed. You will find them in salads, soups, casseroles, curries, and wraps. Soybeans can be turned into tofu or tempeh, which are common in many dishes around the world.

People have used the word bean for a very long time. Languages related to English had a word like "bean" before the 12th century, and at first it usually named familiar pod seeds such as broad beans or chickpeas. When explorers brought new kinds of beans from the Americas to Europe during a big plant exchange, the name began to include those newcomers too.

Sometimes we call seeds that only look like beans by the same name—such as coffee beans or vanilla beans—but those are not true legumes. Here we mean the plants in the pea, or legume, family.

Raw beans are not always safe to eat. Some beans contain natural substances that can make people sick if the beans are eaten raw or not cooked long enough. Cooking destroys these substances and makes the beans safe.

Easy safety steps: soak dry beans, pour away the soaking water, and cook them until they are soft. Canned beans are already cooked and ready to eat. Also, some people may feel gassy after eating beans; drinking water and eating slowly can help.

Most of the beans we eat today belong to the genus Phaseolus, which came from the Americas. But many kinds of legumes are called beans. Other important groups include Vigna (for example, mung beans), Cicer (chickpeas), Lens (lentils), Glycine (soybeans), and Lupinus (lupin beans).

Some bean types have natural chemicals that need special cooking. For example, certain raw kidney-type beans must be soaked and boiled so they are safe to eat. Over time people learned how to prepare each kind of bean, which helped spread many different bean foods around the world.

Cultivar is a word for a plant kind that people have grown again and again because they like its seeds, color, size, or taste. Long ago, farmers grew many different cultivars of beans. Today, modern plant breeding often picks only a few kinds that are easiest to grow or sell, so some older kinds could disappear.

To keep bean diversity safe, scientists and farmers save seeds in gardens and seed banks. Big stores of seeds, like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, hold tens of thousands of bean samples so future farmers can grow many different kinds of beans.