When you sit down to eat a meal, what’s your top priority? Are you worried about your waistline? Your wallet? The nutrition your body derives from the meal? Or do you just want something quick, easy, and tasty?
Health-conscious people who look for healthy food on a budget know that it’s extremely hard to find foods that check all of those boxes at once. Usually, you have to sacrifice in one category or another and build a meal that’s “good enough” and meets most of your goals.
That’s one of the (many) reasons we at Randall Beans love beans so much. They’re healthy, tasty, easy, and economical. Beans are nature’s multivitamins packed into hundreds of tiny, delicious, inexpensive pieces.
If you regularly eat beans because of their low cost or for dietary reasons, you may not be aware of all their benefits. Or, perhaps you’ve incorporated beans into your diet because you’ve heard from older relatives that they’re healthy, but you don’t know the specifics of their nutritional value.
Either way, you’re in the right place! Let’s talk about how wonderful Randall Pinto Beans and Randall Great Northern Beans are for you, so you can feel good about your choices next time you sit down and eat a white bean stir fry or even a Frito salad.
Nutritional Benefits Of Pinto Beans
Protein
Vegetarians and vegans often turn to pinto beans as one of their top protein sources. Pinto beans pack a walloping 21.47g of protein in a 100g serving. That means one serving of Randall Pinto Beans provides more than a third of your entire day’s recommended protein intake.
The nutritional profile improves if you pair Randall Pinto Beans with corn, cornbread, or rice. Beans pack a lot of protein, but beans are an incomplete protein, so some of the essential amino acids your body needs to build and repair tissue are missing. Corn, cornbread, and rice provide those missing amino acids but lack other amino acids that are naturally found in beans. Eat any of them together in the same meal, and beans and corn, cornbread, or rice are considered a complete protein that gives your body the building blocks it needs to stay healthy.
Throughout the world, classic recipes combine beans and corn, cornbread, or rice together to make a complete protein.
If you know anyone who grew up during the Great Depression, especially in rural or farming communities, you will know that they ate beans and cornbread often. Meat was very expensive. Farmers who raised animals didn’t have the luxury of using them to feed their own families because they depended on the income they derived from selling them to sustain their farms.
Fiber
That same 100g serving of Randall Pinto Beans contains 15.5g of fiber, which is about 41% of the average person’s recommended daily intake. This is terrific news because so many people struggle to get enough fiber in their daily diets, and beans are such a convenient solution!
Fiber is the substance that keeps your gut healthy. It bulks up the contents of your stomach and helps it pass through your digestive system more efficiently, leaving fewer food remnants behind to cause problems.
But fiber has far more beneficial effects than only keeping you regular. Eating enough fiber on a regular basis can prevent your intestines from being exposed to too many toxic materials, and it can bind with some of the chemicals that can cause colon cancer over time. Eating fiber also helps to reduce cholesterol levels by binding with the acids that carry cholesterol and preventing it from being absorbed into your bloodstream.
Complex Carbs
There is no substitute for carbohydrates to provide your body with energy. Beans are full of complex carbs that digest slowly (because of all the fiber and protein) and fuel your body without causing undesirable blood sugar spikes!
Fat
It’s worth noting that beans are naturally low in fat. Randall Pinto Beans contain only 1.23g of fat in a 100g serving, which is fantastic if you’re watching your fat intake. If you’re not on a low-fat diet, you can easily pair your beans with cheese, sour cream, olive oil, avocados, or your other fat of choice to make it a nutritionally balanced meal.
Vitamins & Minerals
The full nutritional profile of Randall Pinto Beans reads more like a nutrition label on a vitamin supplement than what you’d expect from a simple food that is jarred. Randall Pinto Beans contain significant amounts of many of the daily nutrients you need. Look at these RDA percentages:
Courtesy of Nutrition and You.com
If you’re a pregnant woman, you’ll be interested to see that staggering level of folate!
Nutritional Benefits Of Great Northern Beans
Protein
As with Randall Pinto Beans, Randall Great Northern Beans are also full of protein—8.33g!
This is a bit less than pinto beans, but the USDA’s standard 100g serving is only about half a cup of beans. So if you heap a few spoonfuls of beans on your tortilla or chow down on some white bean coffee cake, chances are good that you’ll be getting far more than 8g of protein in your meal.
Fiber
Similarly, Randall Great Northern Beans provide 7g of fiber in a 100g serving. If you don’t typically eat much fiber, dining on Randall Great Northern Beans is a fantastic way to ease into raising your fiber intake without causing bloating.
Complex Carbs
Randall Great Northern Beans also provide glucose control and steady fuel because they are a complex carbohydrate. 100g contains about 21.1g of carbs.
If you subtract the indigestible dietary fiber content, you end up with 14g of net carbohydrates, which could easily fit into a low-carb diet or even a keto diet!
Fat
Randall Great Northern Beans are extremely low in fat, at just 0.45g per serving. Enjoy them as a practically fat-free treat, or pair with the cream, cheese, or oil of your choice to round out a balanced meal.
In fact, if you have an open mind and some inspiration, great northern beans can provide low-fat ingredient swaps for sweet treats such as this chocolate and peanut butter smoothie or these sweet potato and white bean breakfast bars!
Vitamins & Minerals
The USDA’s nutrient profile of Great Northern beans is extensive.
Topping the list are iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc, and selenium, with plenty more nutrients not far behind.
So, the next time you’re in your pantry looking for something easy, convenient, and healthy to make for dinner, look no further than those jars of Randall Pinto Beans and Randall Great Northern Beans, ready to add to your meal right out of the jar. Get creative enough with your recipes, and the rest of the family doesn’t even need to know you’re actually feeding them healthy foods!
