Kidney Beans vs White Beans – Which is Healthier?

Our Verdict

When comparing kidney beans to white beans, we picked the white.

Why?

It was close, and each has its strengths! Bear in mind, these are very closely-related beans. But there are distinguishing factors:

In terms of macros, kidney beans have very slightly more fiber and white beans have very slightly more protein. But both are close enough in both of those things to call this a tie in this category.

When it comes to vitamins, we will briefly break slightly from our usual methodology by noting that there are two ways of looking at this one:

1. kidney beans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and K, while white beans have more vitamin B5 and E
2. kidney beans have slightly more of some vitamins that don’t usually see a deficiency, while white beans have 31x more vitamin E

For scoring purposes and in the interests of reproducibility, however, we will still stand by our usual method of noting that this is a 7:2 win for kidney beans in this category; we just wanted to note that in practical health terms, an argument can be made for white beans on the vitamin front too.

In the category of minerals, kidney beans have slightly more phosphorus, while white beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An easy win for white beans this time.

(In case you’re wondering about the margin on phosphorus, it was 0.2x more, so we’re not seeing a situation like white beans’ 31x more vitamin E)

Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for white means, and even more so if you want to use the alternate scoring consideration for vitamins, but either way, do enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!

Want to learn more?

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Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen

Enjoy!