VIDEO DESCRIPTION: 🌱Today, I am going to answer the question, “Can I eat black beans when I have been diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease?” Then, I will walk you through the black beans nutritional facts. If you have ever wondered about these questions – you are not alone. When you are in the middle of a flare, it can be challenging to try and figure out what you can eat that won’t make your symptoms worse. Here’s what you need to know. ⭐

📍 Welcome to the IBD Vegan YouTube channel. The 4 areas of focus for @IBDvegan are (1) nutrition for flares, (2) science explained, (3) impactful interviews, and (4) real reviews. While I already have a ton of content I want to share with you; knowing it will take some time to get it out in front of you, I want to know which topics you want to hear about next. What do you want to learn first? Understanding this will help me to prioritize which content I publish first. Looking forward to your ideas!

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. My name is Alexis, with IBD Vegan. Today, we are going to talk about black beans. And answer the question, “Can I have black beans if I am in the middle of an IBD flare?”

Today, I will briefly go over the variety of black beans we are talking about, so you know the specifics of that, whether it is included in the IBD Vegan diet or not, the benefits and cations of black beans, as well as an understanding of the elimination diet phases.  Peels and seeds we will discuss, the preparation for black beans, the max portion limit per FODMAP research for black beans, as well as substitutions. And finally, we will go over the nutritional facts about black beans.

So, when we talk about black beans, we are talking about all varieties of those; specifically whether they are dried black beans, canned, drained, and rinsed.

Is it included in the IBD Vegan diet? Yes, it is. Specifically, we are talking about the timeframe when you are in the middle of a flare from Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. The specific information you need to pay attention to inside of this is the portion limits.

Some interesting benefits about black beans are that they are satiating when you eat them; meaning that you feel full after you eat them and it limits you wanting to continue to eat, which is nice. It helps regulate blood sugar levels, reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels, helps to strengthen bones as well as protect the heart.

For cautions, you have to be concerned about digestive symptoms. It could cause bloating and gas. Two of the things you can do to help with that are to cook the black beans in a pressure cooker as well as a digestive enzyme called papaya, which is a chewable that you can eat just before eating the black beans. That tends to help with bloating and gas.

For the elimination diet phase, during the elimination phase, you want to exclude black beans from your diet. During the reintroduction phase, you want to try black beans, where that is the only thing you are introducing into your diet; that one thing, paying attention to the portion limit size. After that, if you decide that black beans are something that you can eat during a flare; it doesn’t bother you, then you can go to the personalization phase where you make a decision about how much of the black beans you can tolerate. So, start with the limit portion and then increase that until you reach the portion that no longer works for you. That way you will know how much black beans that you can eat for your body during a flare.

In general, when we are in the middle of a flare from IBD, we cannot digest seeds and peels from fruits and vegetables. In this case, we are talking about black beans, so the pods are not digestible. If you are getting black beans not fresh, if you are getting them dried or canned, then this is a nonissue for you.

For the preparation for black beans, we want to make sure to cook them in a pressure cooker, rinse them beforehand, put more water into the can or dried beans into the pressure cooker and cook that on the beans setting, which I believe is 20 minutes. I could be wrong. I need to check on that. And this is during an active IBD flare. If you cook the legumes in the pressure cooker it can reduce the lectins, which can cause inflammation. This is an inflammatory disease and we want to reduce the inflammation level as much as possible.

For the FODMAP research (and this is coming out of Monash University), the maximum portion limit is 2 tablespoons or 40 grams. I think somebody said this is like a topper that you can put on top of an appropriate wrap or taco kind of dish, where you just have a little bit on top. If you are missing black beans, do pay attention to the portion limit where you can only have 2 tablespoons or 40 grams of that during a single portion. The reason is they are high in oligosaccharides, which are the “O” of FODMAP – “F” “O” “D” “M” “A” “P”. It is considered a low FODMAP as long as you do not increase it more than the 2 tablespoons or 40 grams.

Now, if that does not work for you two tablespoons and you would like to have a larger portion… One substitution could be red kidney beans. They have a similar texture and protein content like black beans.

So, here is the card for black beans, if you want to take a picture of that. It has everything that we just went over as well as the references for that.

And next we are going to talk about the nutrition facts. And before embarking on any dietary changes, you should consult with a registered dietician or another member of your healthcare team – before starting that.

Okay, so when we are looking at this, it’s a portion size of 100 grams. And if you remember, the portion limit is 40 grams, so what you would have to do if these things are important to you, is take these times point four zero (0.40) to get the actual amount for the portion limit. But I am giving this to you in 100 grams because the research from Monash University changes over time, and then this would make it very easy for you to understand the parts you might be interested in. We do have to note that the sodium is high. In general, canned foods have high sodium levels. And this is dried black beans that still has a high sodium amount. So, if sodium is something you need to pay attention to specifically in your diet, then understand the sodium is relatively high for black beans. Do note though that the folate is 141 units and this is much better than apples for example that are a lot smaller than that. And if you are listening to us on the podcast, the source for the nutrition facts are fdc dot nal dot usda dot gov (fdc.nal.usda.gov).

This is IBD Vegan. I’m your host, Alexis. And I want you to remember, it is possible to become more educated, resilient, and feel empowered for a better quality of life.