National Eat Your Beans Day
Beans, beans, good for your heart…see what recipes you can make with a variety of beans to keep yourself healthy and full, from chickpeas to fava beans.
Drive July bean sales and recipe engagement by positioning beans as a nutritious, sustainable protein staple with deep historical roots.
- 40,000+ bean varieties: challenge followers to try one new type this July
- From ancient Egypt to your plate: beans' 9,000-year journey to modern wellness
- Fiber + protein + zero fat: the nutritional powerhouse your body has craved since 7000 BC
- Bean recipe roundup: chickpeas, fava, black beans—which will you cook first?
Beans have been with us a long time, a very long time in fact. How long we hear you ask? The earliest sign of cultivated beans was in the seventh millennium BC, a time so long ago that it predated one of the earliest human crafts, ceramics.
That’s right, we’ve been eating beans since before we knew how to make a pot to cook them in! The Egyptians took a particular interest in them, and beans were often found buried with the dead. Beans were so important to human history they even got a mention in the Iliad.
Beans have many qualities that helped them take and hold their place as an important human staple. They’re an excellent source of fiber and protein with virtually no fat to be found and they provide calcium, folic acid, potassium, and iron, all vital to a healthy body. 40,000 varieties can be found throughout the world, though we only see a few of these made available to mass markets.
Unlike most cultivated plants, beans have been near perfect from the beginning! The genes from our ancestor’s crops of beans are almost identical to those of the modern crop. Why mess with something when it’s already perfect?! You don’t! You just enjoy a big bowl every National Eat Your Beans Day, and the rest of the year as well!