If nutrition is a sport, it has no ordinary fans. Support for Team Protein, the 2025 champions, is numerous and exciting, supported by the vast industry of protein supplement products such as popcorn, soda and cereal. Also famous is the MAHA team, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorses “real foods,” especially red meat and dairy. Dietitians are seasoned players with an old-school strategy: go heavy on herbs and light on saturated fat. Along with competitors like Team Keto and Vegan, there are also fiber mixers, whose popularity has grown alongside the sale of fiber-filled cookies, powders, and beverages.
As in any love affair, choosing one team means demonizing the other stars: the MAHA siders hate the low-fat milk of dieters, and the fiber-mixers scorn the team’s protein-grabbing supplement. Yet there is one player that any team would welcome. It is full of fiber and protein. Kennedy would call it a “real meal.” It’s plant-based, widely available, and surprisingly inexpensive. It is the most homely and humble food: beans.
Beans have a lot going for them. (The term beans Often used as a catchall term for the larger legume family, which includes beans as well as a subset called lentils; (Here, I’m talking about them all.) These little packets pack a nutritional punch—so much so that the 2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended increasing daily serving sizes and promoting them as a protein source over meat and seafood. (Published guidelines on meat happiness don’t include this recommendation.) Navy beans, for example, are especially high in fiber, and lentils are protein-rich. For the farmer, beans are a blessing: the plants store nitrogen in their roots, so they need less fertilizer and leave the soil healthy after harvest. They are considerably milder in climate than beef. Cooked well, they are creamy, tender, and excellent vehicles for flavor.
Even the most talented player cannot excel at everything. Dry beans take time and effort to cook. Expert technique can make them tasty, but they will never taste like steaks. And yes, they can cause horrible gas, especially the novitiate of beans – that’s what most Americans are. Unlike, say, Mexican or South Asian cuisine, American cuisine is not particularly bean-heavy. Americans eat about 60 pounds of meat a year, but only nine pounds of beans.
The difference is partly due to the poor image of beans. Bean companies “may need a little extra oomph in the marketing department,” Jonah Parker, a production analyst at industry-research firm Sarcana, told me. Zach Conrad, a nutrition epidemiologist at William & Mary, recently co-authored a study showing that most Americans do not eat enough beans to meet the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s recommendations. The article also notes that beans, because of their relative cheapness, are shamefully associated with poverty. “At a nice restaurant, on a date, most people don’t buy bean salad,” Conrad told me.
But the changes in American life make the bean a very attractive option. Other humble foods, like canned fish and cottage cheese, have recently experienced a bump in their status, thanks to the nation’s ongoing protein obsession. Konrad said that the protein in beans is not as easy for the body to absorb as animal products, so you have to eat more to get the same amount, but the conversion is very insignificant. Choosing beans also helps square some of the conflicting nutrition advice in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. The updated version emphasizes protein consumption, but also places strict limits on saturated fat, which is high in red meat and is associated with a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. As my colleague Nicolas Florco has noted, meeting these standards with animal products will be a challenge. But with beans, it’s almost too small.
Recently, food costs have increased in the eye water, especially for protein. Beef prices in September 2025 were nearly 15 percent higher than last year. This year the price of chicken will be less. Kennedy recently encouraged people to eat offal as a very affordable source of protein. Even canned food has become more expensive. Yet beans, canned or otherwise, are still one of the cheapest sources of protein. A can of navy beans costs about a dollar and contains about the same amount of protein as a quarter-pounder of McDonald’s.
If nutritional, environmental, and financial benefits aren’t enough reasons to root for beans, consider their latest transformation. Beans are no longer “what grandma used to make,” Parker said. America’s kitchen craze has been experimenting since at least the early 2000s, but the bean innovation really took off in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when people chose to cook in the pantry to stay safe, budget and pass the time, says Bettina Macalintal. the eater Who’s popular Instagram account is filled with adorable pictures of baked beans. Popular recipe creators, including Alison Roman—who helped propel the “brotti bean” to culinary-world ubiquity in 2021—have taken the bean even further. Food influencer and model Pierce Abernathy gives beans a delicious treatment with ingredients like salsa verde and bottarga. Abernathy, whose bean recipes include lesser-known varieties such as Anasazi and giant beans, is among a growing number of heirloom bean enthusiasts; Rancho Gordo, the heirloom bean company, operates a subscription club that reportedly has 29,000 people on its waiting list.
Food companies are introducing bean-based products with unexpected flavors and convenient shapes. Dynamically branded canned bean stews from Heyday Canning, launching in 2020, include kimchi-sesame navy beans, harissa-lime chickpeas, and vodka-sauced cannellini beans. A brand called Lentiful sells individually packaged, microwaveable lentils in flavors such as Thai Coconut Curry and Lemon Mediterranean, marketing them as a snack. Lentil Telepathy, which launched in 2023, specializes in air-toasted crunchy lentils that can be eaten as a snack or salad topper, as in the case of peri-peri and salt and vinegar varieties, or as a breakfast cereal, if toasted marshmallows or château hold more appeal. Bean dips can be mixed with bean chips. If you prefer a lighter meat, a line of fermented bean salad launches next month.
“Americans are finally getting what the world has known for centuries,” Ben Bacon, co-founder of Lentilful, told me: Beans are a main course, not just a side. Steve Sandow, the founder of Rancho Gordo, told me he hopes bienthology is here to stay. “Taste of the Week is kind of fun, but I really want people to just incorporate beans into the American diet,” he said. Team fandoms, of course, run deep. But no matter where the allegiances lie, everyone should be able to agree that beans are the MVP.
#food #Americans #agree