To celebrate Mental Health Awareness Week we have talked to one of our members, Dr Nadia Radzman, a researcher at the Sainsbury laboratory, Cambridge, and her work on the health benefits of eating broad beans particularly their positive effects on depression thanks to their chemical composition.
“Broad beans could do so much good for people in this country if they could be persuaded to eat it,” she says. “And that is my mission. To get the country to love the broad bean.”
Broad beans were first grown in the Middle East but have been cultivated in Britain since the iron age. About 740,000 tonnes are harvested each year from about 170,000 hectares of UK land.
“However a great deal of that crop is used for animal feed with much of the rest being exported to Egypt where it is used, instead of chickpeas, to make falafels when we should be using it ourselves.”
You can read more about Nadia's work HERE.