Beans for a Better World

Beans are good for you and the planet. And it's easy to eat more of them.

Maybe you’ve heard of “TikTok brain,” a term that describes the harmful impacts of watching an endless stream of short videos. The negative impacts of time spent on social media, which include poorer memory and concentration as well as depression and anxiety, are most pronounced in young people, but they can affect adults, too. I carefully curate my content on most platforms, and I mostly avoid TikTok altogether.

But admittedly, I’ve been intrigued by the recent #BeanTok trend. Videos encouraging consumption of two cups of beans per day promise, among other benefits, that you’ll save on groceries, experience better intestinal health and see a reduction in food cravings. Not all the claims I’ve seen are credible, but certainly there is evidence that eating more fiber – and beans are fiber stars—is beneficial for weight loss.

Bacteria in the intestines ferment the fiber in beans to produce short chain fatty acids, compounds that may help protect against chronic disease and help manage hunger. Legumes are not exactly “beanzempic,” as they’ve been dubbed, but the fact that beans are packed with both protein and fiber may help with satiety. High fiber intake stimulates production of GLP-1, the same hormone mimicked by Ozempic and similar drugs. It’s a smaller effect than you’d get from medication, but it might help explain some of the relationship between high fiber diets and lower body weight.

Beans are cheap, too, especially if you cook them from scratch, and they are the most sustainable of all protein-rich foods. Eating beans instead of meat is among the easiest ways to make your diet healthier while being a little kinder to the earth and to animals.

Beans are also woven into our shared global food traditions. Somehow shared connections around food seem to matter more than ever in a political climate that seeks to sow division and distrust among groups.

So yes, there are lots of good reasons to eat beans. And while I still don’t love TikTok, it’s refreshing to see a wellness trend touting something that is demonstrably healthy and sustainable while also being affordable and accessible.

But two cups of beans a day? That’s a challenge for sure. Like a lot of social media content, the 2-cups-a-day recommendation is a made-up number. For many people, a cup of beans per day is a realistic goal and one that is bound to improve your diet if you aren’t eating much in the way of beans right now.

If you’re new to eating beans, a sudden addition might cause some intestinal distress since gas is a byproduct of the activity of those friendly gut bacteria. Smaller beans like lentils and split peas tend to be easier to digest. Canned beans are usually very well-cooked, making them easier to digest, too, especially if you drain and rinse them first. And if you’re cooking beans from scratch, soak them first and rinse several times during the soaking process. If you don’t generally eat a lot of beans, add them gradually to your meals and make sure you’re drinking adequate liquids.

Beans cooked from dried are cheaper, but if your goal is to eat more beans, you should make it as easy on yourself as possible. Most of the #BeanTok videos I watched used canned beans and so do my suggestions below. If you prefer to use beans cooked from scratch, 1 ½ cup drained cooked beans equals one can.

The ideas below are free-style – not recipes and not exact amounts. The aim of #BeanTok is to provide low-cost, easy options rather than complex recipes. If you want fancier bean recipes, the internet is packed with them and so are vegan cookbooks. (I am recently obsessed with Marry Me Butter Beans.)

Five-minute Bean Cuisine

• Use canned refried beans (choose vegetarian beans to avoid the saturated fat in most commercial brands) and shredded cheese to make bean burritos. I make dozens of these and keep them in the freezer for microwaveable meals.

• The British are famous for their beans on toast, and also for Jacket Potatoes topped with baked beans. Any canned baked beans will work. Again, look for vegetarian options to avoid those high in saturated fat.

• Add beans to tossed salads (and no, it doesn’t have to be chickpeas) or any grain salad.

• Stir a few tablespoons of your favorite barbecue sauce into canned black or kidney beans and serve over corn bread.

More than Five Minutes but Still Fast

• I never heard the phrase dense salad before TikTok, but I’m familiar with the concept – a sort of free-form combination of several types of beans plus lots of chopped vegetables like sweet bell peppers, black olives, marinated artichoke hearts, cucumber, red onions. Some recipes include feta cheese (I use Violife vegan Feta). Toss the salad with a dressing of olive oil and fresh lemon juice or vinegar and whatever herbs you like.

• Well-cooked white beans make the best cream sauce. Blend them with olive oil and lemon juice and use in soups or other recipes that call for heavy cream.

• Beans go beautifully with sausage, and stirring in chopped apples takes the combo to a whole new level. Sauté onion and vegan sausage in olive oil, add cooked or canned cannellini or navy beans, a little vegetable broth, and a diced apple or two. Cook until the apple is soft.

• Canned black beans can be turned into soup in minutes. Drain the beans and add them to sauteed chopped onions and garlic. Season with cumin, salt and pepper, and fresh lemon or lime juice. Top with avocado and cilantro, and maybe a few handfuls of crushed tortilla chips.

• If you want beans cooked from scratch in a hurry, red lentils are the best bet. Add the lentils plus vegetable broth (about 3 cups of broth to 1 cup dried lentils) to sauteed onions and simmer until the lentils are soft. Season with cumin, coriander, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Add a can of lite coconut milk or pureed pumpkin (or both!) for an easy upgrade.

• Chickpeas are at home in dishes from both Mediterranean countries and India. Cook them in coconut milk and canned tomatoes, seasoned with curry paste and onions and serve over rice for a fast Indian dinner.

• And while black bean brownies are not as healthy as black bean soup, if you’re going to make a batch of brownies, why not add black beans to them?

This just scratches the surface of possibilities for easy bean dishes. I’d love to hear about your favorite ways to eat more beans.