Top 6 Benefits Of Mung Beans

Have you ever gotten Pho at a restaurant?

I love Pho. And I especially enjoy the beanstalks that come with it.

However, I never looked into them or even really knew what they were.

Recently, I took a gut test that told me mung bean sprouts were one of my personal superfoods.

Huh?

I was familiar with the beans but had no idea about the many benefits of mung beans – especially the sprouts. I quickly started adding them to my grocery cart and doing research.

Turns out mung bean sprouts are cheap, healthy, and just plain tasty!

The Mung Bean

The mung bean itself is a small green legume from Asia. Traditionally the bean has been ground into pastes, powdered, or eaten boiled and raw.

Turns out when the bean is sprouted it unlocks a whole new level of goodness. It decreases its calories and frees up antioxidants!

Mung beans can be sprouted by being soaked in water and left under daylight (or grow light) for 4 hours. The beans then spend the rest of the day in the dark.

Common uses for mung bean sprouts are in Vietnamese spring rolls, a garnish for Pho, blanched in Korean food, Lumpia in the Philippines, and stir-fried in Chinese cuisine.

In addition to tasting cool and clean, it turns out mung bean sprouts have loads of benefits and are a superfood!

The benefits of Mung Beans and sprouts

1. Loaded with vitamins and minerals

Mung beans have quite a few different vitamins and as such, I’ve highlighted the main ones. Check out the full nutritional benefits in the link below.

1 serving (100 g) 1 cup of Mung beans contains:

• 212 calories
• 14.2 g protein
• 38 g carbohydrates
  • 23.3 g net carbs
  • 4 g sugar
  • 15.4 g fiber
• .8 g fat
• Folate 321.2μg – 81% of daily intake
• Iron 2.8mg 36% of daily intake
• Manganese 0.6mg 31% of daily intake
• Magnesium 97mg 28% of daily intake

(% of daily intake based on 2,000 calorie diet)

According to the Bio station, over 92% of Americans have a vitamin deficiency in some form.

The main culprits being lack of Vitamin D, A, C, E and calcium, potassium, magnesium.

In general, foods are becoming less nutritious. As the soil nutrient quality declines over time, so does the nutrients in food.

This is why it is more important than ever to find foods that have a lot of good nutrition and cycle them regularly into your diet.

2. One of the higher protein concentrations in a plant

As mentioned above, 1 cup of mung beans has a whopping 14.2 grams of protein!

In fact, it is one of the proteins that is used to make the Beyond meat burger.

Other plants protein amount for reference

• Edamame (Soybean) Contains 17 g per cup
• Lentils 17.68 per cup
• Kale 2 g per cup
• Broccoli 2.6 g per cup

This shocked me! Even 100 g (1 cup) of steak contains about 25 g protein. Mung beans are definitely up there in the fight.

3. Essential Amino Acids

There are 9 essential amino acids that the body cannot make itself. Mung beans contain all of these and more amino acids.

Amino acids are essential for building proteins in your body. This helps you gain and put on healthy muscle.

In fact, in a 2009 study, 36 strength-trained males did an 8-week resistance program designed to build muscle and lose body fat.

The subjects either drank 14 grams of BCAA (branch chain amino acids), 28 grams of whey protein, or 28 grams of carbohydrates from a sports drink.

The amino acid group significantly outperformed and outgained their counterparts by double kilograms on average.

Altogether amino acids play a huge role in gaining muscle and mung beans contain quite a bit of all of the important ones.

4. Packed with Fiber

At 15.4 grams of fiber, Mung bean packs a punch!

They contain pectin and other dietary fibers that aid in digestion. Fiber is very important for gut health, weight control, and digestion.

5. Can help facilitate weight loss

Because of the increased fiber and protein, mung bean can greatly help build muscle while losing body fat.

As discussed above, protein and aminos are essential to building muscle. The muscle in your body acts as a powerhouse, burning calories and helping reduce body fat.

Additionally, your body needs fiber. Your body has a hard time digesting fiber, but it tries really hard to.

This burns calories and helps you feel fuller, decreasing your appetite.

6. Increase Gut Health

As I mentioned earlier a gut analysis test revealed that for my gut microbiome, mung bean sprouts were particularly beneficial.

According to Viome.com, the pectin mung beans contain is the key. Pectin is a soluble fiber. Pectin helps to enrich the mucus layer in your gut and helps protect the lining making digestion run smoothly.

Digestion greatly assists in your gut health by making sure all of the proper nutrients are absorbed. This helps keep you feeling more satiated and full. Lessening the need for additional calories that you really don’t need.

Your gut has over 100 million nerve cells. In many ways, it is in fact your second brain.

Keeping your gut healthy is crucial and affects almost everything you do including

• Sleep
• Mood
• Physical health
• Brain health
• Hormone levels

This is why people advise pro-biotics, spices like Turmeric, fresh fruit and vegetables, and other foods for gut health because it is so important!

In Conclusion

If you’re like me last year, I had no idea what mung beans were. It wasn’t until I learned about this superfood and the numerous benefits of mung beans that I started rotating them into my diet.

I now eat them weekly and I love them!

Hopefully, you learned a thing or two about another food that you can eat that you can greatly benefit from. It works two-fold if you replace something else with mung beans or sprouts.

For example, I have cut out refried beans. I’m now eating way more healthy cooked and soaked beans like these ones!

And as far as greens go, I love eating the sprouts as a crunchy snack instead of chips. It sounds weird but many times the craving for chips is really just the craving for something crunchy. Celery and mung beans satisfy my personal crunch desires.

If you’re looking to buy them, many stores do have them available.

Amazon has a good selection of dried and packaged beans for sale, however for sprouts definitely hit your local grocery store.

Stay tuned for how to grow your own sprouts!

Also, definitely subscribe for the latest gut health updates straight to your inbox!