Healthy Food Choices: Beans

Beans can be a great substitute for meat considering they're high in vitamins, fiber and minerals. Learn how to pick your own healthy beans in this video clip.

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Beans are high in vitamins, minerals and fiber
Great substitute for meat
Excellent carbohydrate source

About this Author

Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRITT: Now I'm going to talk to you about beans. Beans are actually a very healthy protein source and they're a very good alternative for those that don't eat meat. Beans are very high in vitamins and minerals and a great source of fiber. They also house a good source of complex carbohydrates, which makes them a well-balanced food. You can eat a variety of different beans. You have things like kidney beans, pinto beans, lentils--they're all very, very healthy, black beans. Beans are also a wonderful thing to add to any dish instead of meats. You can add Chickpeas to spaghetti sauce instead of your ground meat, and it really, really lowers the saturated fat content and increases the fiber and vitamins and minerals. It's important to remember with beans that you don't always have to use dried beans. Sometimes canned beans can be much more efficient because you don't have to soak them overnight. Canned beans do tend to be a little bit higher in sodium, but if you put them in a colander and rinse them under water, you can rinse away a lot of that excess sodium. Remember, beans are an excellent source of protein, they're high in fiber, and they're a good carbohydrate source. So include them in as many dishes as you can. Beans are great alternative to high saturated fat meats and so they've actually been shown to help reduce coronary heart disease. It's also been shown that diets high in plant sources also reduce the risk for cancer. So these are all healthier reasons on why you should add beans into your daily intake.

Healthy Food Choices: Beans Video

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