Healthy, affordable, planet-friendly and – most importantly – absolutely delicious, the vast and versatile bean family is set to play a growing role in our diet.
With the ‘Bang in Some Beans’ campaign launched in the UK a few weeks ago, The Sustainable Restaurant Association explores why beans, peas and lentils will form an incredibly important part of building a better food future, providing benefits for both your restaurant and the planet. Read on for six good reasons why your menus should include beans and pulses…
1. Varied and versatile
There is a wealth of beans, peas and legumes available around the world, from runner beans to edamame, chickpeas to black-eyed peas and cannellini beans to lentils. In fact, there are an estimated 40,000 varieties of common bean, with incredible variety in colour, texture and flavour — making them suitable for a wide range of culinary uses.
- For your restaurant: Boost creativity in your kitchen by encouraging your chefs to move past the traditional ‘centre plate’ proteins of meat and fish. In everything from dips and nibbles through starters, sides, mains and even desserts, beans and pulses can play a starring or supporting role. Roast or fry beans for a crispy garnish, use chickpea flour as a handy gluten-free thickener or in flatbreads or fritters, or shred and bake tofu for an alternative to kebab-style meat. Beans and pulses can also do an excellent job of displacing a proportion of meat in dishes like tacos, burgers, lasagnes and stews, reducing the overall meat required per serving and bringing extra fibre and nutrients to the table.
- For the world: Everyone deserves a diet that is interesting and varied; in fact, the more diversity in our diets, the better for both our bodies and for the planet. By serving more beans and pulses — especially more unusual varieties — our menus can support greater diversity on our plates and in our environment.
2. Budget-friendly
Beans and pulses offer some of the cheapest options out there when it comes to protein, and, when approached with creativity, can offer good profit margins.
- For your restaurant: In a time when both businesses and customers are trying to save money, plant-based proteins can be very useful in creating successful budget-friendly dishes for your menu. With a long shelf life, they’re also great for ordering in bulk.
- For the world: In more global terms, introducing a more widespread use of beans and pulses across our worldwide food systems is vital for feeding a growing population, providing far more calories for human consumption per square metre of land.
3. Nutritious whole food ingredients
Rich in both protein and dietary fibre, beans and pulses also provide plenty of nutrients including iron, potassium and B vitamins. At the same time, they contain no cholesterol and are extremely low in fat. All of this combines to make them suitable for a wide range of dietary requirements: they’re vegan, gluten- and lactose-free, diabetic-friendly and heart-healthy.
- For your restaurant: At The SRA, we believe that restaurants have a role to play in providing nutritious food, without sacrificing flavour or quality. This is reflected in the ‘Feed People Well’ section of our Food Made Good Framework; with wellness dominating more people’s food choices, healthy whole foods are also increasingly important to the customer.
- For the world: Combined with the effects of the climate crisis, our growing global population poses a major challenge when it comes to future food security. Beans and other pulses will play a pivotal role in feeding the world into the future — especially since they can be grown in almost any climate, even in areas threatened by drought, floods and heatwaves. In addition, they’re extremely affordable, making them an accessible protein source for people of any income level and providing essential nutrition for those with low income levels and/or living in developing economies. Already, there are 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone who depend on beans as a primary staple, and about 400 million people globally.
4. On trend
While beans might not sound particularly trendy, they tick a lot of boxes when it comes to modern consumer desires and dietary restrictions. With more customers aware of digestive health and with fibre intake increasingly front of mind, gut-friendly whole foods like beans and legumes are a strategic inclusion on your menu.
- For your restaurant: The more dietary boxes you can tick, the higher your chances are of satisfying customer wants and needs — and the easier it is to land bigger group bookings.
- For the world: Including more beans and pulses in global diets can help to support public health and prevent non-communicable diseases like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
5. Easy to grow in any climate
Freezing aside, beans and pulses can be grown in almost any type of climate. As we see the climate crisis continue to wreak havoc on weather patterns, this will become even more important.
- For your restaurant: With extreme weather events becoming more commonplace and the world’s temperature rises, building your menu around stable, resilient crops like beans and pulses is a smart move. Because they can be grown practically anywhere, it’s also possible to incorporate them into a locally-led sourcing policy.
- For the world: Combined with the effects of the climate crisis, our growing global population poses a major challenge when it comes to feeding the world in the future. Beans and pulses can (and must) play a critical role in providing food security, even in areas threatened by drought, floods and heatwaves.
6. Environmentally positive
Growing beans is actually good for the environment! Beans are a very low-impact source of protein, releasing 90% fewer harmful greenhouse gases than some animal proteins and requiring very little land and water. They’re also ‘nitrogen fixers’: this means that they add valuable nutrients (like nitrogen) to the soil around them through the mechanisms of a symbiotic relationship with the soil bacteria. In fact, many regenerative farms plant legumes like beans as ‘cover crops’ between successive production crops, since they nourish the soil to the benefit of other plant species and reduce or eliminate reliance on nitrogen fertilisers.
- For your restaurant: Customers are increasingly looking for sustainable, planet-friendly options when dining out. Designing a low-impact menu is a great way to meet this demand; make sure to shout about it on your website, your social media and even your menu itself.
- For the world: The hospitality industry has an enormous role to play in helping to reshape our world food systems. Beans and pulses can play an important role in restoring our soil health, supporting biodiversity and reducing or eliminating the need for synthetic fertilisers. Without chemical run-off from agriculture leaking into rivers and lakes, this can also support cleaner waterways and healthier marine ecosystems. Farmers cannot commit to grow what we’re not prepared to buy — but if more restaurants begin to showcase beans and pulses as a regular feature on their menus, this will have a very real effect on our agricultural systems.
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