New research from two William & Mary students has found that the risk of heart attack could be significantly lowered with one simple dietary change: increasing the intake of pulses.
But what is a pulse? A food group with diverse options, pulses are edible seeds from plants in the legume family. Some examples include dry beans, chickpeas, lentils and dry peas.
Tara Kamalakantha ‘28 and Catherine Zavela ‘26 found that greater pulse intake was linked to a lower chance of getting diagnosed with a cardiometabolic disease (CMD), such as heart disease, stroke or diabetes. Kamalakantha and Zavela’s research finds that an additional one ounce-equivalent of pulses per day was associated with 19% lower odds of cardiometabolic disease overall. Their research was recently published in Current Developments in Nutrition, a top publisher for peer-reviewed journals focused on nutrition research.
“One of my biggest takeaways from this research was just how low pulse consumption is in the U.S.” Kamalakantha said. “In our sample, 75% of adults consumed less than 0.37 ounce-equivalents per day, which highlights how low current intake is.”
Starting from scratch
Their research was done in the Nutritional Epidemiology and Food System Analytics Lab, run by Associate Professor of Health Sciences Zach Conrad.
Zavela started working on the project several years ago, and published some of the lab’s early work showing trends in pulse intake over the past 20 years. Kamalakantha joined the project during its later stages and analyzed data from more than 46,000 U.S. adults surveyed between 1999 and 2018 through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The lab’s research used multivariable regression models to examine associations between pulse consumption and cardiometabolic health outcomes. The project was funded by the Pulse Crop Health Initiative at the US Department of Agriculture.
With more than 46,000 data points, you would think that the most challenging aspect of research would be parsing it down. But for Kamalakantha, her biggest hurdle was actually having to start from scratch.
“You really need to identify the gaps in the literature and determine how rigorous research can help address them,” she said. “Previous research on pulses and cardiometabolic disease had produced mixed findings, and this relationship had not been evaluated in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. We knew we could help address that gap using the tools and data we work with in the lab”
Much of the existing literature examined legumes more broadly rather than pulses specifically, making it more difficult to isolate what was already known about pulse intake and health outcomes. After thorough research, enough articles were found to create a conceptual framework that tied pulses to health outcomes conceptually. More work had to be done to understand whether there was a measurable link.
“The hardest part is relating it all back to all the current literature,” Kamalakantha said. “It’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of tweaking and editing. … I’m really grateful I had the liberty to just go for it.”
Opportunities for research
After her first-authored paper was published in Current Developments in Nutrition, Tara presented additional pulse research at the American Society for Nutrition’s NUTRITION 2026 conference, where she received First Place in the Emerging Leaders in Nutrition Science Competition in the Climate, Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health category.
Kamalakantha credits Conrad and his support as vital for her work throughout the project. She describes how his expertise and the resources provided in the lab allow research assistants to make a project their own. In her first year, he was the one who recommended she get involved in the American Society of Nutrition and build her network.
“He’s incredible,” she said. “I not only see him as my research mentor, but as a mentor more broadly. He cares deeply about the students in his lab and their individual research interests, and I think that says a lot about him as a professor because he genuinely cares about everyone’s future.”
“I’m continually reminded how fortunate I am to work with students who are so interested in science and dedicated to understanding how the world works,” Conrad said. “I couldn’t do this work otherwise. Tara and Catherine are exemplary in that regard.”
Kamalakantha is still in disbelief that her work is published in a peer-reviewed journal and that she has the opportunity on campus to do the research she does.
“I would definitely say the research opportunities here for undergraduates are what drew me here,” she said. “I feel like I’ve gotten the opportunity to just go into it, start from scratch and work toward a publication, which I wouldn’t have envisioned initially coming here.”
Right now, she’s working on a scoping review to understand how pulses contribute to environmental sustainability, diet costs, and social outcomes. In the meantime, she hopes people take away from her work that adding pulses to their diet is easier than they think.
“I think that’s a really important takeaway: You don’t have to cut something out of your diet,” she said. “It’s just something you can incorporate over time.”
William Oster, Communications Specialist