Peas are very versatile: you can add them to your salads, mash them to make a delicious paste, steam or boil them, and garnish your favorite dishes. Best of all, those tiny seeds are packed with many benefits:
Pulses can help in weight loss management.
One of the basic and effective ways of losing weight is to reduce calorie intake. However, it may be a challenge when you’re used to excessive amounts of food and when you feel hungry at all times.
Pulses or the edible seeds such as peas may help you on that problem by making you feel full. In a study conducted by St. Michael’s Hospital, a serving of these pulses a day can boost the feeling of fullness by as much as 31% than by simply following a controlled diet. There are two possible reasons for this: they break down the food slowly, and they can displace bad fat from your diet.
They can also bring down the level of bad cholesterol.
A body can have two types of cholesterol: bad and good. Bad cholesterol causes the buildup of plaque on the walls of the artery, narrowing the blood’s passageway. This increases blood pressure and promotes blood clot. This also increases the risk of heart disease and mortality.
Another St. Michael’s Hospital study participated by more than a thousand men and women also points out that pulses can bring down the level of bad cholesterol in the blood. A serving per day of the peas can lower LDL (low-density lipoprotein) by 5% and the risk of CVD by about 6%.
Peas can help reduce the risk of stomach cancer.
A group of researchers from Mexico City in 2009 found out that there’s a direct correlation between the rise of gastric or stomach cancer in the country and the ingestion of nitrate and nitrite. In fact, this type of cancer was the second leading cause of cancer death in the country during this time. However, the same research also suggested that polyphenols especially coumestrol found in peas may prevent gastric cancer by reducing the proliferation of cancer cells and promoting cellular death (apoptosis). You need only 2 milligrams a day of coumestrol to enjoy this benefit, but peas do more by giving you up to 5 times the recommendation.