"Don't be mean with the beans, Mum" (but do cut down on the sugar)

You're probably sick of me banging on about beans by now. "Yes, we know beans come in tins", I hear you cry. "What about all the other weird stuff?!" Well, quite - there are many far more interesting tinned things to try. Usually I would try leave it a bit before doing yet another beany post, but on this occasion, I'm making an exception.

After my visit to the Heinz Beanz Pop-up the other week, I was contacted by the company who do all the publicity and social media stuff for Heinz in the UK- would I be interested in trying out some of their new "No Added Sugar" Beanz for the blog? Well, yes I would, I said. How exciting - I had never been sent a product to do a proper review of before. I gave them my work address to post them to, but wasn't expecting that they would send them pretty much straight away by courier. I returned from my lunch one day the week before last to find a Heinz-blue box on my desk that had just been delivered to the main reception. "What's in the box?" my colleagues enquired of me. "Oh, y'know, just some stuff I ordered" I [rep]lied. I've never told anyone at work about this blog, so to explain why I was being sent tins of beans by courier would be far too long/weird a conversation to be having. So I kept the box well out of sight until home time, to avoid any further questions. But inside were two tins of the new No Added Sugar Beanz, nestled into some scrunched up gold tissue paper.

Given the speed with which they'd sent the tins over to me, I felt it was only right that I act similarly quickly, giving the beans a try and getting a post up online as soon as I could, pretending to myself that I was an actual journalist with copy deadlines to meet, rather than a very amateur blogger who occasionally posts something online, usually weeks or even months later. Of course I completely failed in the deadline I set myself, but about a week later than planned, here we are!

So - Heinz No Added Sugar Beanz. I was told that they had been developed and released in response to the fact that "34% of UK households cutting back on eating sugary foods too often and, of those, 92% trying to actively reduce the amount of sugar in the foods they buy; making it clear that Brits are becoming increasingly concerned with overall sugar consumption". 

Heinz aren't alone in terms of reacting to consumer trends in terms of sugar intake - many food and drink companies have been introducing reduced or sugar free versions of their products over recent years,  most prominently Coca-Cola, who have added both Coke Zero and Coca-Cola Life to their portfolio. The latter of these is particularly notable in that instead of using artificial sweeteners, it uses natural extracts from the leaves of the stevia plant, which have been found to be a far lower calorie alternative to sugar, with a negligible effect on blood sugar levels. I think it is a rather silly name though. Some people refer to normal Coca-Cola as "full-fat" (compared to Diet Coke). By the same logic, if you have a product called Coca-Cola Life, does that mean normal Coke is, effectively, Coca-Cola Death?

Whether or not it has any life-prolonging credentials, Coca-Cola Life does, however, still contain some sugar. With their new beans, Heinz have gone the whole hog and replaced all of the sugar with "stevia glycolsides" from the aforementioned plant. I was pleased that they haven't gone down the Coke route and attempted to come up with some kind of modern, dynamic name for the product - these are not Beanz Life, Beanz Zero, Beanz Free, Beanz Lite, Beanz Air or anything else silly like that, but simply "Heinz No Added Sugar Beanz". In short, they do exactly what they say on the tin.

The label looks much the same as your average tin of Heinz Beanz in its aquamarine livery - apart from a green leaf explaining that the beans contain no artificial sweeteners, colours or flavours, and a thin light blue strip at the side of the keystone logo. Presumably this is to highlight the 'traffic light' nutrition information on the front of the tin, but to me it makes the label look a little lopsided. And I'm not sure how I feel about the children's handwriting-style typeface used for some of the text either - I suppose it is to suggest to parents that the product is good for children, given its lack of sugar, but it looks a little too close to the dreadful Comic Sans for my liking.. 

The phrase "same great taste" has an asterisk after it, which I always think is a bit ominous, as if the manufacturers are trying to hide some important bit of information they don't really want you to see. You have to look on the back of the tin to find the footnote to which it refers, but in fact it's good news this time - another green leaf states "*Same great taste as Heinz 50% Less Sugar Beanz, so we replaced them!" I never tried their "50% Less Sugar Beanz", but now they've been replaced, I guess I won't get the chance - in terms of sugar in your beans, it's all or nothing now.

A list of "good to know" facts (with bean-shaped bullet points) also states that they contain no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives, have 25% less salt than standard Heinz beans, are low in fat, high in protein and fibre, gluten free and vegetarian friendly.

That all sounded pretty good in healthy eating terms, but how would they fare on the plate? I cracked them open... 

 ...they looked like beans. They smelt like beans. And the taste? Well, they are certainly noticeably different to standard beans, which have an instant hit of sweetness when you eat them. These new beans do not taste sweet at all at first, but then the sweetness comes through as a bit of an aftertaste, giving much less of a rounded taste in the mouth, and with an ever-so-slight herbal note to it. I wondered if I was imagining this at first, just because I knew that they were sweetened with stevia leaves, but I later read on Wikipedia that stevia "may have a bitter of licorice-like aftertaste at high concentrations", which I think is what I was picking up on.

So you do still taste a sweetness to the beans, but it is a lot less pronounced than standard beans. As far as I am concerned that is a good thing, particularly if you were having them as part of a full English breakfast, as they would seem less out-of-place alongside the other much more savoury items.

 

I plumped for plain old beans on toast, though I did pep them up with a good grinding of pepper, and I have to admit, a sprinkling of salt too. While it may be a good thing health-wise that Heinz have made them with 25% less salt than their standard beans, this is slightly to the detriment of flavour. But as my plate afterwards attested to, they still went down pretty well.

Would I try them again? Yes, probably. There is a difference in taste, definitely, but it is not vast, and certainly not unpleasant. So I would think that most bean-lovers would be perfectly happy with these, if they tried them. But would they bother to do so? While they will see from the name that these new beans have no added sugar, will they necessarily ask themselves how much sugar is actually in a standard tin? Probably not, but they might be shocked to find out that it is just under 5 teaspoons. That much sugar in a cup of tea would make it practically undrinkable for most people. Heinz presumably don't want people to stop buying their standard beans entirely, so they don't make the comparison too explicit on the label. But I suppose it is good that by launching this new product they are at least providing consumers with a healthier choice. Whether they take it up or not is out of their hands, but personally I think that for future bean feasts, I might be more inclined to do so. So, the next time I'm banging on about beans, it might just be the No Added Sugar ones that I'm using. But either way, I promise I'll leave a bit more time before I next do so.