The quest for happiness has thrown up some mad, bad and frankly rather silly ideas in recent years.
Practising yoga with goats. Immersion in huge vats of iced water. Eating only purple foods. Meditating upside down. Micro-dosing with magic mushrooms.
In fact, it seems we’ll try pretty much anything to banish the blues and add a bit of extra vim and verve to our daily lives.
The latest happiness fad is heralded as the humble broad bean — Vicia faba, or fava bean — with a long list of health benefits that puts even spinach to shame.
For starters, it is bursting with protein, fibre, iron and vitamin C. It is also good for bone health, combatting high blood pressure and anaemia. In addition, it can help lower cholesterol, boost immunity and aid weight loss.
The latest happiness fad is heralded as the humble broad bean — Vicia faba, or fava bean — with a long list of health benefits that puts even spinach to shame
But academics say that’s small fry compared to the impact broad beans — skin on, ideally — can have on our emotional wellbeing.
This is thanks to its exceptionally high levels of levodopa, or L-dopa, a naturally occurring chemical used in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease but also linked to long- term improvements in mood, emotion and, in particular, happiness levels.
According to Dr Nadia Mohd-Radzman, a Cambridge University researcher and botanist who also works at the Entrepreneurship Lab of King’s College Cambridge, it even helps improve a condition called anhedonia — the inability to feel or experience pleasure.
And it is so effective she insists that if only we’d eat more of them, broad beans could completely transform the nation’s health and happiness.
‘That is my mission,’ she said in a recent interview. ‘To get the country to love the broad bean.’
And to this end she is doing all she can to promote consumption of the great British broad bean — improving its varieties, suggesting tempting recipes and holding a series of lectures about them.
It is an impressive and valiant plan, but Dr Mohd-Radzman has her work cut out.
Because broad beans — originally from the Middle East but grown in Britain since the Iron Age — are not universally loved.
But academics say that’s small fry compared to the impact broad beans — skin on, ideally — can have on our emotional wellbeing
In fact, while some of us adore them — skins on or off — and get terribly excited when they’re in season, most people seem to loathe them.
By my (admittedly very rough) straw poll, at least two out of three British adults and most children seem to dislike the taste, texture, shape, rubbery skin — pretty much everything about them.
Some say they taste woolly. Others don’t like the ‘mouth feel’. A lot of people have very strong opinions about whether they should be peeled or not.
A few take it further. In her book, The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours (Bloomsbury), Niki Segnit categorises them as ‘half vegetable, half mammal’ for their ‘obscurely bloody, offal-like and a bit cheesy’ taste.
Meanwhile, on Mumsnet, there are endless animated discussion threads in which the beans are dismissed as ‘bitter’, ‘unpleasant’, ‘rubbery’, ‘truly disgusting’ and, rather more alarmingly, as ‘looking and tasting like dead finger pads’.
Which might seem a bit extreme, but we’re not the first to hate them. Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician ordered his followers not to eat them because of their alleged resemblance to a foetus. He said to do so would be like consuming human flesh.
So perhaps it’s no surprise to learn that, while British farmers harvest about 740,000 tonnes of broad beans every year, we eat only a fraction. Most are used as animal feed or exported to Egypt, where they are used to make falafels as an alternative to chickpeas.
Which seems a shame.
Broad beans are bursting with protein, fibre, iron and vitamin C
Not least as they are an efficient, sustainable, highly nutritious crop that our farmers are very good at growing.
But more importantly because, according to Dr Mohd-Radzman, if we gobbled more broad beans, we’d all perk up and embrace life with a spring in our step and a smile on our lips.
And she is not the only one begging us to rethink our relationship with broad beans.
A team of scientists at Reading University recently proposed that Britons should switch to bread made with broad beans. They argued this would be healthier than wheat loaves, with an ‘improved nutritional profile’ and better for the environment.
Others have been eulogising about broad bean milk — an interesting idea, but perhaps not one to ask for in your cappuccino.
Broad beans have another unusual benefit, too — though this one is strictly ‘non-nutritional’ Researchers at Iran’s Mashhad University recently found they can also slow down hair growth with ‘no significant side effects’.
Broad beans are also good for bone health, combatting high blood pressure and anaemia. In addition, it can help lower cholesterol, boost immunity and aid weight loss
For their study, a cream with a 20 per cent bean content was applied to 25 ladies’ armpits, twice a day, for three months. This reduced the number and thickness of hairs with ‘no significant side effects’.
Again it is L-dopa which works the magic. It is converted by the body into dopamine which shrinks the blood vessels that stimulate hair growth.
However, broad beans do need to be handled with care. For, it wasn’t just Pythagoras who avoided them. A very small number of people in the Middle East and Mediterranean are susceptible to developing a rare blood disorder, haemolytic anaemia, from eating broad beans.
But Dr Mohd-Radzman has a solution. She says farmers could grow bean varieties with low levels of the triggering chemicals — and points out that scientists are also working on creating genetically edited beans with none whatsoever.
So, all in all, a wonder food to rival all others. If only more than a handful of us could be persuaded to actually eat them. Perhaps the delicious recipes, above, might change your mind…
