The Best Way to Get Beans in Your Diet
Because of a lot of diet crazes like Atkins, Keto and other fads, items like beans have become a bit of a no-no for people wanting to lead a healthy lifestyle. The fact that beans have carbs in them makes them a “bad” food item in these modern times, but are they really bad for you? The fact of the matter is that while beans do have carbohydrates, they’re complex and balanced by fibre and take a long time to break down in the body, so they don’t typically cause blood sugar spikes. They’re getting a lot of bad press from huge corporations that want to charge you a whole lot of money for chemical-laden food items that haven’t really been studied.
Beans can help lower cholesterol, regulate blood sugar, and they provide a ton of essential vitamins and nutrients for your body. Plus, more than anything, they actually taste fantastic. This is why many people are seeking to buy beans online, and perhaps why you should be too. But how do you go about incorporating beans into your diet? This is what we’re going to discuss in detail.
Incorporating Beans Into Recipes
Incorporating healthy, organic beans into your diet really doesn’t have to be difficult. In all honesty, it’s as simple as making the choice to buy and eat beans. The real issue here is in eating the beans in a variety of recipes that are overall healthy for you, plus very delicious and a bit exciting so that you don’t get bored of the beans. Here are eight simple dishes that will help add beans to your diet while also adding a lot of flair to your meals.
8 Dishes That Are Great for Beans
1: Hummus
Earthy, a bit salty, and the ideal dip for everything from organic tortilla chips to vegetable sticks, there’s nothing out there quite like a good hummus. A Middle Eastern dish, hummus is basically made from garbanzo beans along with some oil and spices. This is truly a dish that can wow anyone, and since it’s a dip, there are endless ways you can tweak it to your liking to make it hit the spot. This is far and away the easiest dish to get beans into your diet.
2: Black Bean Guacamole
When looking to buy beans online, one of the best values you will find is with black beans. Full of vitamins and protein, the black bean is ideal for a healthy lifestyle, and black bean guacamole is a fantastic dish. Along with the avocados that are rich in good fats and important nutrients, this is another dip, though it can also be eaten as a main dish or a topper or condiment for practically anything else you’re eating.
3: Adzuki Bean Bowls
Adzuki beans are huge in the Middle East and Northern Africa, and one of their favourite ways to eat them is to create bean bowls. Adzuki beans are the star here, cooked beans that are seasoned with a lot of spices and perhaps some meat. Like the other recipes, you can really get creative here and adjust your adzuki bowls to your liking, so that you’re always eating something that tastes great and also represents other parts of your diet.
4: Baby Lima Salad
Sweet, savoury, and perhaps one of the most delicious beans out there, baby Lima beans are really a great choice for multiple reasons. Along with all the health benefits that one can gain from these tasty beans, they’re also the easiest to incorporate into something like a salad. With any combination of oil and vinegar you prefer, and with any sort of additions, baby Lima beans make for an excellent salad that can be eaten cold or hot. You can even fold them into things like chicken and egg salads to make them pop with more texture, flavour and nutrition.
5: Black Eyed Peas
As many southern Americans will tell you, there’s nothing like a bowl of black-eyed peas. These are made from black-eyed beans, which are very high in fibre and have a great natural sweetness to them. This is a fantastic way to incorporate beans because it gives you a savoury dish that some people travel thousands of miles for. Tens of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to a place like New Orleans every year to try this dish cooked in an authentic manner. That’s how delicious this dish can be. There’s no easier way to incorporate something like black-eyed beans into the diet than to have a dish that you want to eat.
6: Roasted Chickpeas
The common theme here with these dishes is that you can basically use beans as the main ingredient and then build up around them with any other ingredients you want. The same goes for roasted chickpeas, which is another word for garbanzos. You can toss them in a lot of spices, roast them with meats or potatoes, or just douse them in some butter and salt and cook them until they’re crispy and crunchy. This can be a legitimate main course, a side dish, or even a good snack to eat, like a healthier version of a potato chip.
7: Bean Wraps
Nobody appreciates beans quite as much as people looking for meat substitutes. Whether you’re a vegan or just trying to make a change, items like black beans really pack in the protein, and they provide a lot of chew and texture in things like wraps. Let your imagination run wild here, as any sort of wrap you love can implement a black bean filling in place of a meat filling. So the sky’s the limit.
8: Bean Soup
Yes, the common theme has been beans as the main ingredient, then making them any way you want. The idea was to just give you ideas, much like with an adzuki bean soup. Hearty and full of texture and tons of flavour, the adzuki is the ideal bean for soups, especially Asian-inspired soups. So on a cold winter’s day, or even when you just want something warm and filling, think about making a soup with the adzuki bean as the star.
There’s nothing out there like organic beans. You just cannot beat them for flavour, texture, and health benefits. Just make sure you buy your beans from a quality provider, and enjoy these and many more dishes.
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