(CNN) — A lowly vegetable typically associated with flatulence has hit the big time. No longer will beans will be infamous only for their fiber content — as in the children’s song “Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot” — they’ll also be known for their role as a major source of protein.
Beans and their legume cousins, peas and lentils, entered the nutritional spotlight Tuesday when the 2025 US Dietary Advisory Committee released scientific guidance that could shape federal nutrition advice for the next five years.
“What we’re recommending is that the protein section of MyPlate, the government’s food guide on how to eat a healthy diet, start with beans, peas and lentils,” said committee member Dr. Christopher Gardner, a research professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California who directs its Nutrition Studies Research Group.
“We advised that meat, including lean meat, should be moved to the end of the protein list,” he added.
The committee found that when one animal source of saturated fat was swapped for another animal source with less saturated fat, such as lean meat, there was little benefit to health, he said.
“That has to do with fiber; there’s no fiber in meat,” Gardner said. “When you go from one animal source to beans, peas and lentils or grains and veggies, however, not only do you have less saturated fat, but you also have fiber. And so those results on health were much more compelling.”
Why are legumes so healthy?
Legumes – which include about a dozen types of beans and peas such as black-eyed peas, lentils, chickpeas, edamame and peanuts – have long been an inexpensive source of protein, vitamins, complex carbohydrates and fiber.
All the members of the legume family are full of nutrients, including copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, folic acid, zinc, the essential amino acid lysine, and lots of protein and fiber.
Each type of bean has a different nutritional profile, so eating a variety of beans may be best, experts say. Adzuki, or the red mung bean, has more fiber than many other varieties, while fava beans are packed with the antioxidant lutein. Black and dark red kidney beans are full of potassium, and chickpeas have lots of magnesium.
Legumes have always played a key role in many of the world’s food cultures, including the award-winning plant-based Mediterranean diet, which has been linked to a longer life.
Besides their nutritional benefits, it’s good for the planet when people eat more beans and legumes, said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.
Cows burp and fart methane, which contributes to climate change, and require 20 times the amount of land compared with plants such as legumes, according to the Center for Biological Diversity , an environmental advocacy group.
“In 2017, a study led by researchers at Loma Linda University indicated that if most Americans would swap out beef for beans in their diets as a matter of routine, it would achieve — by itself — nearly 2/3 of the greenhouse gas emission reduction pledged by 2020 by the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change,” Katz wrote in an email.
“Most people might not associate bean consumption with reduced gas … but in the case of planetary health, it is just so!”
Similar recommendations with a few twists
The advisory committee also recommended that Americans ages 2 and older cut back on red and processed meats, salt, saturated fat, sugar-sweetened foods and drinks, and refined grains, such as typically found in many ultraprocessed foods.
Instead, a healthy diet should be higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish and other seafood, vegetable oils higher in unsaturated fat and plant-based foods, the report said.
“The advisory committee’s bottom line is to eat more plants, balance calories, and don’t eat too much sodium, sugar, and saturated fat. That’s what the guidelines said in 1980 and have said ever since,” said molecular biologist and nutrition scientist Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, in an email.
One notable difference: The committee suggested that fat-free or low-fat dairy foods be de-emphasized as items for inclusion in a healthy dietary pattern and be taken off the primary list of foods.
The change came from this committee’s new emphasis on health equity in nutrition, Gardner said. To accomplish that, a subcommittee was tasked with making sure research considered other races and cultures besides White and Western.
“Previous committees in 2015 and 2020 included low-fat dairy,” Gardner said. “But when you factor in race and ethnicity, dairy isn’t even in the picture, and that totally makes sense. A lot of the world is lactose-intolerant.”
The committee also suggested cutting back on starchy foods. Although legumes are technically starchy vegetables, there is a big difference, Katz said.
“Simple starches — white breads, refined grains in general, sweets and salty snacks — have few nutritional virtues of their own,” he said. “They also reduce the proportion of total daily calories available to assign to foods that do promote health most reliably: vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds.”
No action on ultraprocessed foods
For the first time, the advisory committee addressed the potential role of ultraprocessed foods in the US obesity epidemic. However, the panel limited its scientific analysis to one question: How does ultraprocessed food affect growth, weight gain and obesity across the lifespan?
Answering that question proved difficult, as most research in the field is observational and focused on the effects of ultraprocessed foods on chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
With the restrictions imposed on the research, the committee could find only “limited” evidence to suggest that ultraprocessed foods could lead to weight gain and obesity in children, adolescents and adults of all ages. The committee did not recommend action on ultraprocessed foods, leaving that issue up to the advisers for the 2030-2035 US Dietary Guidelines.
“In five years, hopefully this isn’t sort of punted again for another five,” said committee member Dr. Deirdre Tobias, an obesity and nutritional epidemiologist and assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“Research is going to explode, so revisiting it will probably be, if anything, even more of a priority,” Tobias said in a May meeting of the committee.
The committee was not charged with creating recommendations on alcohol consumption and sustainability; other groups are considering those issues, according to the report.
The scientific advisory report is just that — advisory — so the next step of the process is the writing of the actual 2025-2030 US Dietary Guidelines, slated to be published by the end of 2025. The new guidelines could address ultraprocessed foods if federal nutrition scientists who write the final document consider other data and public comments.
What the final US 2025-30 dietary guidelines will recommend will probably depend on who heads the US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, Nestle said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, has made it clear that he wants to regulate chemicals in food. Kennedy also wants to limit access to soda and ultraprocessed foods in school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
“The agencies could decide to advise reducing intake of ultra-processed foods,” Nestle said. “They also could decide that the evidence on saturated fat does not warrant advice to restrict dairy foods, or even red meat.”
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