Publication:

‘Beans in toast’. Can Britain raise the pulse?

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    Authors & editors

    Publisher Milling & Grain
    Year of publication 2023 March
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    Medium Digital
    Edition1
    Topics

    Nutrition & health

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    Scope & contentBy James Cooper, Milling and Grain contributor, UK

    World Pulses Day - February 10th - has just passed, but there’s a lot more work to be done in getting the consumer to understand the value of this remarkable bean.

    “Global supply and trade flows are well established; pulses are there in the market. And, what’s lacking now is education of the consumer, they’re just not in most diets."

    Researchers in the UK are now working with the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) to shift people’s negative perception of beans and pulses.

    The programme aims to fundamentally transform the UK food system, addressing questions around what we should eat, produce, and manufacture, and crucially - the Achilles heel of any food system - what we should or shouldn’t import.

    Milling considerations
    Are pulses a crop the miller can easily adapt to? I asked James Maguire, Sales Leader, Frontier Agriculture and President of Pulses UK. “If they are milling cereals, then probably not. They require quite a different infrastructure.
    In terms of either conveyors, elevators - the practical ways of getting it from a lorry to a mill - you tend to find the plants that handle the pulses have a very different set up. There probably needs to be some changes.
    However, small scale millers who are probably not doing the volumes, and can tweak their machinery, they’ll probably be the ones to start it. Pulses are a still a bit specialist to mill at the moment,” James concedes...Read more.

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