Bush’s Baked Beans: The Vegetable Kids Love!??!

This afternoon on the Food Network, I saw this surprising and shocking commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HyH5v_WCj4

I was so surprised that I actually had to rewind and rewatch it to make sure I’d actually heard it correctly.

Given the casting and the bright cinematography reminiscent of a Saturday Night Live skit (particularly with the talented and heavily underrated Evan Arnold), I was hoping to have a nice little laugh, but I was stunned by the tag line at the end. And no, I’m not talking about the advertising agency’s designated tagline “Booyah!”, which cleverly buries the lede; I’m talking about the tagline they designed to be remembered and the one which threw me: “Bush’s Baked Beans: The Vegetable Kids Love.”

While technically correct in so many of the wrong ways based on the USDA’s definition of vegetables, this commercial and its definition of vegetable belies the spirit in which the vast majority of American viewers are going to view and understand it. (And I’ll freely admit that at any given time, I’ve got up to two quarts of cooked beans in my refrigerator and a massive 25 pound bag of dried beans in the larder.)

I’ll at least give them credit that the dish served in the commercial did feature chicken as the protein, which by the USDA guidelines then pushes the beans into the “vegetable” column rather than the protein column in this meal. And I’ll further credit them that the serving sizes are almost reasonable for children of this age, though I suspect that from a commercial production standpoint, the small servings were more a function of trying to better feature the beans on the plate. However, if this is a balanced dinner, I’m guessing that the children aren’t getting their USDA RDA for “true” vegetables and fruit and are drastically overdosing on protein.

Fortunately, this commercial isn’t as egregious as Cheetos suggesting that they’re part of the vegetable food group because they’re made out of corn byproduct (incidentally, they have a pitiful Overall Nutritional Quality Index of 4!), but it does leave us on the terribly slippery slope that probably isn’t helping the overall American diet.

Beans and peas are the mature forms of legumes. They include kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), split peas and lentils. They are available in dry, canned, and frozen forms. These foods are excellent sources of plant protein, and also provide other nutrients such as iron and zinc. They are similar to meats, poultry, and fish in their contribution of these nutrients. Therefore, they are considered part of the Protein Foods Group. Many people consider beans and peas as vegetarian alternatives for meat. However, they are also considered part of the Vegetable Group because they are excellent sources of dietary fiber and nutrients such as folate and potassium. These nutrients, which are often low in the diet of many Americans, are also found in other vegetables.

 

Because of their high nutrient content, consuming beans and peas is recommended for everyone, including people who also eat meat, poultry, and fish regularly. The USDA Food Patterns classify beans and peas as a subgroup of the Vegetable Group. The USDA Food Patterns also indicate that beans and peas may be counted as part of the Protein Foods Group. Individuals can count beans and peas as either a vegetable or a protein food.

–Source Beans and peas are unique foods | USDA ChooseMyPlate.gov

For more information on beans, I’ll recommend the following more reliable resources:

BIRS Workshop: Advances and Challenges in Protein-RNA: Recognition, Regulation and Prediction (15w5063)

Bookmarked 15w5063: Advances and Challenges in Protein-RNA: Recognition, Regulation and Prediction (Banff International Research Station | birs.ca)
BIRS 5 day worksop, arriving in Banff, Alberta Sunday, June 7 and departing Friday, June 12, 2015

In the years since the first assembly of the human genome, the complex and vital role of RNA and RNA binding proteins in regulation of the genome expression has expanded through the discovery of RNA-binding proteins and large classes of non-coding RNA that control many developmental decisions as part of protein- RNA complexes. Our molecular level understanding of RNA regulation has dramatically improved as many new structures of RNA–protein complexes have been determined and new sophisticated experimental technologies and dedicated computational modeling have emerged to investigate these interactions at the whole-genome level. Further deep insight on the molecular mechanisms that underline genome expression regulation is critical for understanding fundamental biology and disease progression towards the discovery of new approaches to interfere with disease progression.

The proposed workshop will bring together experts in RNA biology with structural biologists that focus on RNA-protein complexes, as well as computational biologists who seek to model and develop predictive tools based on the confluence of these experimental advances. The workshop intends to foster new collaborations between experimental and computational biologists and catalyze the development of new and improved technologies (such as single cell binding methods) that merge experimental analysis with novel mathematical and computational techniques to better understand the rules of protein-RNA recognition and RNA-based biological regulation.

The organizers of the workshop are both leaders in the field of protein-RNA recognition and interactions: Yael Mandel-Gutfreund has been working in the field of protein-Nucleic Acids interactions since 1994. Her main research interest is protein-RNA recognition and regulation. She has developed several tools and web servers for predicting RNA binding proteins and RNA binding motifs. Yael is the head to the computational molecular laboratory at the Technion and the president of the Israeli society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Gabriele Varani has been working in the field of RNA structure and protein-RNA interactions since 1987. His main research interest is the structural basis for protein-RNA recognition and the prediction and design of RNA-binding proteins. He determined some of the first few structures of protein-RNA complexes and developed computational tools to analyze and predict the specificity of RNA -binding proteins. His group applies these tools to design RNA-binding proteins with new specificity to control gene expression. Our invitation to participate in the workshop has been met with great enthusiasm by the researchers. More than 20 principle investigators have already confirmed their interest in attending. Six of the confirmed participants are female scientists including the organizer Yael Mandel-Gutfreund as well as Traci Hall, Lynne Maquat, Elena Conti, Susan Jones, Drena Dobbs. We also have invited and confirmed the participation of young and promising researchers including Markus Landthaler, Gene Yeo, Jernej Ule, Uwe Ohler and others. Our confirmed participants come from many different countries: US, Canada, UK, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Poland and Israel. Two confirmed participants as well as the organizer have attended the BIRS workshops in the past.

A key objective of the workshop is to bring together researchers with experimental, mathematical and computational background to share results and discuss the main advances and challenges in the prediction, analysis and control of RNA-protein recognition and RNA-based regulation of gene expression. Towards this aim, we plan to adopt the format of previous BIRS meetings in which invited participants (including selected students) will present relatively short presentations of 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of active discussions. This format will leave aside ample time for informal discussions to foster exchanges between participants. To stress the collaborative, multidisciplinary nature of the workshop, we plan to dedicate each of the workshop sessions to a specific topic that will comprise presentations of structural, experimental and computational approaches, rather than create session focused on a particular approach. Each session we will include at least one lecture from a young scientist/postdoctoral fellow/student to be chosen among attendees by the organizers.

Suggested preliminary schedule:

  • Day 1: Modeling and high throughput approaches to genome-wide analysis of protein-RNA interactions
  • Day 2: Predicting and designing new RNA binding proteins
  • Day 3: Generating and modeling RNA-based regulatory networks
  • Day 4: Principles of RNA regulation by RNA binding proteins
  • Day 5: Conclusion round table discussion on the present and future challenges of the field