Love legumes? Bookmark this list of the healthiest beans! Beans and their legume cousins are largely unsung nutritional heroes. You can use beans in stews, casseroles, and stir-fry. You can also blend them into creamy soups or dips. Fun Fact: All beans are legumes, but not all legumes are beans. Legumes are plants that produce seeds or fruit inside a pod. This class of vegetables includes beans, chickpeas, lentils, peanuts, and peas, among many others. Beans contain between 21 to 25 percent protein by weight, which is much higher than other sources of vegetable protein.
And some legumes provide even more protein than that. More on that later. Plus, unlike lean meat , "beans are super-economical so it can be an inexpensive way to get nutrient-dense, high-protein options in your diet," Previte adds.
Stock up on these affordable, amazingly healthy beans below. We've ranked them from highest to lowest in protein, and asked the RDs to dish about their favorite ways to put each to delicious use. Besides four grams of protein, a half-cup serving of green peas also packs in 4 grams of satiating fiber—equivalent to 14 percent DV—for only 67 calories. As more people explore plant-based eating, there are now protein powders made from these pulses. Add half a cup of frozen peas to pesto pasta, stir-fry, or saute them with carrots and a bit of butter as a side for a roasted chicken dinner.
Edamame, or immature soybeans, are not only good sources of protein, but they're also high in calcium, vitamin C, vitamin K, iron and folate, Harris-Pincus explains. Edamame is often found in Asian-themed grain bowls, poke bowls , or in stir-fry dishes," she says. Also called "butter beans," limas are an excellent source of the trace mineral, which helps the body detoxify sulfites that are found in prepared foods," Previte says.
Saute with olive oil, onion, garlic, and a couple of your favorite fresh herbs for one of Brooking's favorite dinner side dishes. With a pleasant earthy flavor and a quarter of your daily fiber per serving 6 grams , the texture of these beans allows them to flex and fit into recipes as wide-ranging as mashed potatoes , stews, pastas, and more. One of the easiest legumes to consume because of their multitasking abilities try them in everything from creamy hummus to falafel to roasted and sprinkled atop salads , these magnesium and potassium stars are great for heart health, according to Previte.
Beans and other legumes: Cooking tips Want to add nutritious beans and legumes to your diet but aren't sure how? This guide can help. By Mayo Clinic Staff. Thank you for Subscribing Our Housecall e-newsletter will keep you up-to-date on the latest health information. Please try again. Something went wrong on our side, please try again. Show references Duyff RL. Cook for flavor and health.
New York, N. Nelson JK expert opinion. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. May 8, Larousse L. Larousse Gastronomique. See also A healthier take on a breakfast favorite A new way to enjoy fresh fruit A spoonful of sugar helps the veggies go down Add kick to fresh fruit Secrets of low-fat cooking An easy way to add omega-3 Bake with less sugar Batch cooking for 1 Canned pumpkin: Better than fresh?
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All beans are very low in fats, generally. But among these 23 beans, the beans with the best fat quality score were winged beans and garbanzo beans.
Beans are also excellent sources of protein. As you'll see later, beans all contain high concentrations of protein. But our protein ranking will show you which ones top our list of high protein beans. Fiber is a very important dietary component that we often don't get enough of in our diets. Fiber is important for everything from heart health and gut health to weight-loss and insulin regulation.
The healthiest beans in our rankings are fiber-dense. A few beans high in fiber on a per-weight basis include winged beans, hyacinth beans, and French beans, while a few beans high in fiber on a per-calorie basis include kidney beans and hyacinth beans. Whole foods are advocated among nutritionists in large part due to their vast array of various nutrients packaged together in one piece.
The synergies from this natural combination of nutrients often add up to a nutritious profile greater than the sum of their parts. For example, the high sugar content of fruits is much less of a health issue because their high fiber content helps regulate our body's insulin response. And fat-soluble vitamins are better absorbed when consumed with some amount of dietary fat.
Another benefit along these lines are phytochemicals - a term that embodies the molecules present in plant-based foods that often serve a nutrition and biochemical purpose but are not as well characterized by nutrition science. For example, beans are high in isoflavones and other polyphenols that exhibit antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective properties. To rank high our list of the healthiest beans, it takes more than just a high density of one or two nutrients.
And not only does a wide variety of nutrients rank beans higher on the list, but having high concentrations on a per-calorie basis that go towards meeting your dietary reference intake DRI values for the day improve their ranking.
However, consuming many of these nutrients in excess of quantities that should provide enough nutrition to thwart both clinical and sub-clinical deficiencies won't provide much added benefit. Therefore, the healthiest beans in our ranking have a high density of nutrients, but also a breadth of nutrients. They provide a more complete and well-balanced source of more nutrition than the others. Taking all of this into consideration, the French bean ranks 1 on our list of the healthiest beans!
French beans are dense with many essential nutrients. In fact, they meet your DRI for all of the minerals on our list! They also are high in all of the B-vitamins except for vitamin B12 which is only present in animal-derived products. They also contain important phytochemicals, they are low calorie and dense with fiber, and they have a heart healthy fat profile.
Without further adieu, here is a snapshot of our ranking of the healthiest beans from best to worst, or feel free to view our interactive charts! Beans and peas are unique foods.
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