Which are more nutritious, dried beans or canned beans?

Although canned beans are more convenient, they contain a ton of extra sodium; so nutritionally, dried beans are a better option. Nutritionist Janet Brill, PhD, RD, shares tips for cooking dried beans.

Transcript

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Ideally, nutritionally speaking, it's always best to cook up your own beans with naturally salt-free dried beans.

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Well, I got to tell you that canned beans are incredibly convenient, and most Americans are buying their beans that way, but that's truly unfortunate

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because canned beans are swimming in salt water. They're just over the top in terms of sodium content.

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So it's ideally, nutritionally speaking, it's always best to cook up your own beans with naturally salt-free dried

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beans. But if you want, if you want to go with the canned beans, which that's fine, but you want to understand that rinsing

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them does not get rid of all the sodium. In fact, the study showed that rinsing canned beans for 10

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minutes is only going to get rid of 41% of the sodium, so that's less than half. And honestly, who rinses for 10 minutes?

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So I think if you're using best-- if you're using canned beans, your best bet is to go with the-- start with the low sodium,

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hands down, no excuses. Start with the low sodium canned beans, and rinse, rinse, rinse.

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Or better yet, cook up the dried beans yourself. As I said, beans are naturally salt-free,

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and you could throw them in a quick-- a time saving tip would be to throw them in your slow cooker at night, and then set it and forget it.

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And in the morning, you have beans, beans, beans, and make a whole big batch because you could-- they freeze really well, and they last like two to three months.