Healthier beans anyone? (Heinz Baked Beanz Reduced Sugar & Salt)

Member Name: laramax

Product:	Heinz Baked Beanz Reduced Sugar & Salt
Date:	15/04/08 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They are lower in sugar and salt that the traditional recipe

Disadvantages: They taste pretty bland

I was doing my regular supermarket shop the other day when disaster struck - as an enthusiastic consumer of Heinz Beans I was shocked to find none of my favourite 200g tins on the shelves in my local Tesco. Undaunted I resolved to check out Sainsburys the following week and rely on my store cupboard in the meantime but I was worried. I have used the 200g can for over 50 years and I love Heinz Beans - could it be that my favourite 'comfort food' was disappearing from the shelves? Well it certainly seemed so when I went into Sainsburys a week later and found they had no stock either.

Desperate I emailed Heinz over the weekend and went to Tesco in a neighbouring town the following Monday. They had no stock either but what I did see on one of their shelves was a 200g can containing 'Heinz Reduced Sugar and Salt Baked Beanz'. As I am currently on a low salt diet to help reduce my blood pressure it seemed as if Heinz understood the problem and had actually designed one of may favourite foods to suit my diet which was great news. Needless to say I bought a few cans.

I was eager to taste my new purchase so that evening I resolved to do my very own taste test and then write a review!

**How do they compare with the old recipe?**

I opened the can and looked inside. The sauce looked a little paler than usual and slightly thicker. I dipped in a fork keen to test the taste - whilst I prefer to eat my beans hot I do sometimes eat them cold so I wanted to test the taste both hot and cold. My first thought was that they tasted slightly sweeter than normal, this surprised me as they say they are low sugar and with no artificial sweetener, they were OK but not the normal Heinz Beans flavour. I put them in a dish and popped them in the microwave. When the beans were hot I thought the flavour was somewhat improved but still rather bland compared to the usual beans.

Looking at the nutritional information on the can and comparing it to the original I discovered that a 100g serving contains (the reduced sugar and salt figures first, traditional recipe second)

Calories 65 72
Protein 4.7g 4.6g
Carbohydrate 11.1g 12.9g
(of which sugar) 3.4g 4.8g
Fat 0.2g 0.2g
Fibre 3.7g 3.7g
Salt 0.5g 0.9g

Therefore it would appear that they have reduced the sugar by about 25% and the salt content by over 40%. According to the contents list you get slightly more beans and tomatoes in the new tin but to my eye the quantities looked around the same.

**What do I think of them?**

To be honest I did think that the taste was somewhat bland and uninteresting however that did not surprise me. When I first started cutting out salt in my diet I thought everything tasted bland and it is only now, some months later, that I have started to taste the real flavours in food. It is all about educating your taste buds if you really do want to reduce the salt in your diet. I have been very pleased with the improvements in my general health since I started cutting down on salt so I am committed to keeping my usage down so I was really hopeful that this product would help with that. I also thought now that my taste buds were used to low salt I wouldn't have noticed such a marked change but I did - whether this will change when I have eaten the remaining tins I am not sure.

I congratulate Heinz on actually reducing the salt and sugar without adding lots of additives and sweeteners and I suspect that over time I would adapt my taste buds to these beans. However the question is whether I would move from the traditional recipe to these on a regular basis?

I doubt that I would. Since cutting down on salt in my diet I have restricted myself to eating Heinz beans just once a week as a treat and have got used to that. I have always loved Heinz beans since I was a small child and they are now a treat which I really enjoy. I didn't get the same enjoyment from eating the reduced sugar and salt variety so from a positive point of view if I switched to these I would probably eat them less often as they don't taste as good as the original. That wouldn't be good for Heinz of course but I might finally kick the beans habit!

To me the saving of 0.4g of salt once each week isn't enough to make me want to change to something I don't enjoy as much. I think they are a great product for someone who eats far too much salt every day as I used to but I will stick to more fresh fruit a veg rather than eating more beans like these.

**Would I recommend them?**

No I wouldn't if you like the occasional can of beans and you love Heinz Beans. However if you eat lots of salty foods and are trying to cut down then they might help things along. I do however salute Heinz for trying to address some of the dietary issues we face at the moment. I will try out any further products that they introduce which are low in salt and sugar but I suspect that for me their beans are sacrosanct so I guess I do not want them to change.

Summary: These might be better for you but they don't taste ars good to me