Dee Sargeant
There are some foods that arrive with a trumpet fanfare, a glossy advert and a price tag that suggests they were assembled by aerospace engineers. Then there are beans. Plain, sturdy, deeply unfashionable beans. And yet Sarah Bern is backing them with the sort of conviction usually reserved for front-row scrums and winning collisions, arguing that one of the simplest foods in the cupboard may also be one of the most useful.
For an elite athlete, that matters. Bern is not in the business of dietary guesswork. As a Red Roses prop, her job is built on force, recovery and repeat effort, which means food is not decorative. It is functional. It is part of the machinery. And in her view, beans are not some worthy side note to performance nutrition. They are part of the engine room.
“I am a tighthead prop so I really care about what I eat. I need to be big, strong, powerful in order to play rugby so I need to be fuelled and what we can always do is Bang In Some Beans!”
That has the ring of a player who knows exactly what the body asks for and what it punishes when neglected. In a sporting world often hypnotised by powders, sachets and things sold in chrome tubs, the case for beans is refreshingly unflashy. Protein, fibre, carbohydrates and nutrients, all bundled into one humble ingredient that has been sitting quietly in kitchens for years while trendier foods took the spotlight.
Why Sarah Bern’s message lands
The strength of this campaign is that it does not ask people to believe in nutritional magic. It asks them to notice what is already there. Beans help with protein intake, support recovery and provide the sort of slow-burning fuel that suits athletes, active people and, frankly, anyone trying to eat like a functioning adult rather than a startled raccoon at a service station.
Bern makes the point simply.
“No matter what position you play, you have to eat a lot of protein to make sure your muscles are repairing.”
That is the heart of it. Whether the audience is a rugby player, a gym regular, a junior athlete or someone trying to stop the 4 pm slump from flattening their ambitions, recovery nutrition matters. And the appeal here is that beans are accessible. They do not require a sponsorship deal or a biometric wristband. They require a spoon.
The practical case for beans in sport
What makes the Sarah Bern argument more persuasive is that it is not trapped in theory. She links beans to real eating habits, real recovery windows and real life. That is where these campaigns often live or die. People do not eat nutrients; they eat meals, snacks and things they actually fancy after a hard session.
Bern understands that, especially for younger athletes.
“When you finish a game, you want to make sure you get your protein in. Especially when you’re young, and you don’t necessarily always think about nutrition, having something that you actually look forward to eating, having black beans within a brownie is something that you could have easily. And I can imagine how, after a game, having that little bit of protein and the carbohydrates is definitely going to help you recover, ready to fuel you for training on Monday, or even as a nice little snack.”
That is a clever point, and an important one. Good nutrition only works when people will actually eat it. Black bean brownies may sound like the sort of thing dreamt up during a particularly chaotic lunch break, but the broader idea is sound: better performance nutrition does not need to be joyless. If beans can move from side dish to recovery snack, then suddenly they become far more useful to far more people.
A public health problem hiding in plain sight
This is not just a sport story. It is a public health one wearing muddy boots. Diets low in beans are associated with up to 9,000 premature deaths in the UK each year, and only 4% of UK adults are eating the recommended amount of fibre. Those are not decorative statistics. They point to a national eating pattern that is flimsy where it should be robust.
So while Sarah Bern gives the campaign competitive credibility, the wider message goes well beyond elite sport. Beans are being pitched not as miracle food, but as a practical correction to a diet that has become too processed, too fibre-poor and far too dependent on convenience without substance.
That is partly why the Bang In Some Beans campaign has gathered such broad support. Bern has joined chefs Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Thomasina Miers in backing the effort to double bean consumption in the UK. The campaign is led by The Food Foundation and Veg Power, with support from major food businesses and caterers, and funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.
From the front row to the podcast mic
The timing is deliberate. Bern appears on the Bang in Some Beans podcast on Tuesday, 17 March, where she will talk about her love of beans and meet Hove Rugby Club’s Under 14 girls, described as one of the UK’s standout teams at that age level. She will also try chef Claire Thompson’s black bean brownie recipe from 5 O’Clock Apron, which sounds like the sort of test likely to separate genuine curiosity from polite sporting diplomacy.
She appears alongside sportsman and Plant Fuel author Jeffrey Boadi, who discusses the protein in beans, while the wider podcast series, hosted by chef Melissa Hemsley, explores how athletes, doctors, chefs, businesses and families are rethinking the role of beans in the British diet.
It is a neat structure: sport gives the message reach, food gives it practicality, and health gives it urgency.
Why this matters now
There is something rather appealing about Sarah Bern leading a message like this. Front-row players are not generally associated with nutritional fads or airy wellness sermons. They deal in force, leverage and practical outcomes. So when a prop tells you a food works, it carries a different sort of credibility. Less incense, more evidence.
And perhaps that is why this campaign has a chance. It does not ask Britain to reinvent dinner. It asks Britain to take a second look at one of the most overlooked foods on the shelf and recognise that performance nutrition, recovery food and public health do not always need to arrive in expensive packaging.
Sometimes they come in a tin.
