Starting Your Healthy Diet: Beans
Written by Quynh Chau Stone, Rachel Chin
Creating and managing a healthy diet is important to one’s health. Eating the right foods and types of foods ensures your body gets all of the valuable and necessary nutrients. Finding the right foods can be challenging and time-consuming, but there are lots of resources out there to help you and there are lots of amazing foods to choose from.
One of these amazing foods is beans. Beans are incredible! Beans are chock-full of nutrients, high in antioxidants, vitamins, and valuable minerals. Incorporating beans into your diet is so important to ensure a healthy and long lifestyle. Just by incorporating two tablespoons of beans in every meal can create big waves in your overall health.
Soybeans
What are Beans?
Beans are a type of legume. One of the more popular non-meat choices among the limited few. Not only are they readily available, and reasonably priced compared to meat options, but they come in so many different shapes, sizes, and textures.
Why Beans?
Beans are heart healthy, they help maintain normal blood sugar and levels. They are also high in iron, a vital mineral for blood production.
Beans are great for cholesterol. They help prevent high cholesterol and are great weight-loss food. They don’t contain too much fat and make you feel full faster. They contain important amino acids that promote muscle growth and strengthen the immune system.
Beans are high in fiber and contain important probiotics, special bacteria used for digestion. They are great for any sort of digestive or gastrointestinal problems.
Beans are a good source of folate. An important vitamin for everyone, but especially for pregnant women or women who are looking to conceive. Folate is so important to ensure that the baby develops properly and the mother is strong and healthy.
How to use Beans?
Beans are such a powerful food source, but how does one incorporate beans into their daily diet? Beans are versatile in that they can be used across the whole spectrum of delicacies. Ranging from sweet and soft desserts to salty and crispy snacks. Beans come in so many shapes, sizes, and textures that you’ll definitely find a bean that you like.
Mung Beans
Where to find Them?
Beans are pretty easy to find. Almost any kind of grocery store and even your local convenience chain may carry beans of any form.
But not all beans are created equal. Choose organic and naturally grown beans over their commercially processed and canned options. These beans retain more of their nutritional value and are a much healthier option. Canned beans and beans grown with fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides can contain harmful chemicals that could cause numerous problems in your health.
Simply increasing and incorporating your favorite beans into your daily meals and choosing organically grown beans over processed beans will help prevent and reduce many health problems and chronic conditions.
Stone International Wellness is not a professional medical facility and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. You should consult with your primary care physician before drastically changing any part of your daily regime.
Credits: Cabelvey.com-History of Dried Beans, Beaninstitute.com-Beans & Health Overview