Beans, beans the wonderful...

Many cultures around the world use beans as part of their culinary repertoire. They are a wonderful vegetarian source of protein. In Ghanaian food beans are used in two very popular dishes: Red-Red (fried plantains with spicy bean stew) and Waakye (pronounced "waa-chay" a mixture of beans and rice).

I recently realized that I have taken beans for granted, more or less assuming that one bean was as good as another. Yet, from a health perspective, all beans are not created equally. Just as comparison shopping among brands will yield surprisingly different nutritional content for different brands of the same product, so too beans differ. Black Beans, Pinto Beans, and Black-eye peas are all excellent sources of fiber, but they also all have more calories than Kidney or Navy beans. While Black-eye peas are a great source of fiber, they have far less protein per serving than the other beans. Protein and fiber together is part of what makes beans such a wonderful tool for feeling satisfied long after a meal.

The beans also vary widely in the vitamins and nutrients they contain. Kidney and Navy beans both offer at least one third of your daily vitamin C, much more than the other bean varieties. Black-eye peas are a great source of vitaimins A and C. In fact, Black-eye peas offer nearly as much calcium per 100g serving as spinach, making them a great source of vegetable-based calcium. Read on to see a side-by-side comparison of basic nutritional information for the several of the most common varieties of beans.