The Power-Packed Goodness of Beans For Confinement!

Ah, behold! The magical power of the humble little beans! They have fibre, protein, folate, minerals, and vitamins, it really is a little powerhouse ingredient all wrapped up in a convenient package. Whether you’re giving birth soon or perhaps you’ve just given birth, beans can help boost your recovery. In fact, it is generally a good healthy addition to have even if you are not pregnant.

Let’s start with understanding why beans are good, besides being a delicious tasting ingredient. For instance, some of the key nutrients that beans and legumes provide in general are:

Nutrients	Function
Fibre	It helps in digestive regularity
Fat and Carbohydrates	It helps give your body energy
Protein	It maintains and repairs tissues which are essential during postpartum for recovery and wound healing.
Iron	It supports growth and development, and is used in the production of haemoglobin.
Phosphorus and Calcium	It is essential for the formation of bones and teeth
Magnesium and Potassium	It regulates muscle and nerve functions
Folate	It is necessary to make healthy red blood cells
Zinc	It is used to facilitate the immune system and metabolism
Copper	It maintains healthy bones, blood vessels, nerves, and immune function
Manganese	It helps form connective tissues, bones, blood clotting factors, and sex hormones
Selenium	It improves cognition, immune system function, and fertility

Now, that is a whole lot of things to pack within for something that’s smaller than the length of your little finger! At this point, we might as well just call it a superfood.

Recovery

What we do have to note at this point is that while your body is recovering, you need to replenish what you’ve lost during childbirth. According to a Registered Dietitian, Melissa Mitri, the primary nutrient that postpartum mothers require most is Iron. Hey, that’s what is found in beans too!

Putting together what we’ve learnt so far, childbirth depletes iron since there is a lot of blood loss. Iron and Folate are utilised in rebuilding the blood cells and replenishing the store that you’ve lost, first and foremost. With the blood you are then able to move oxygen supply throughout your body. 

On top of that, Iron improves your collagen formation which promotes wound healing around the genital and caesarean area after labour. Protein helps you maintain muscle mass while you recover and breastfeed. 

Calcium will help ensure your calcium level is restored as you continuously produce breast milk for your newborn, and fibre helps you keep a healthy gut which leads to a good and regular digestive system. On the side of the newborn, all those nutrients help build their bones strong and healthy, and support brain development.

Sleep Quality and Mood Regulation

So, your little one has you up most of the day and when you finally do get them to settle down for a nap, you end up wanting to rest yourself only to be staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Once more, the mighty bean comes to the rescue!

Beans contain Vitamin B6 which plays a role in mood regulation and sleep quality. Some researchers theorise that better sleep may lead to a reduced risk of depression. This is because vitamin B6 helps your body synthesise dopamine and tryptophan which is important for the production of serotonin, a feel-good hormone and melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep. What this simply means is that vitamin B6 is essential to your body’s ability to make the substance that helps you feel sleepy and makes you fall asleep. 

If this is true, this is an additional reason as to how having beans in a mummy’s diet can be very beneficial especially since mummies tend to lack a lot of sleep during the first few months. Any help to have better quality sleep is always good!

If this has piqued your interest and you would like to give it a go, have a look at our Chinese confinement diet menu and try our signature confinement soup package.

Here are some examples of our dishes which contain beans:

Type of Beans	Tian Wei Signature Dishes with Beans
Soybeans	Pork Ribs Soup with Peanuts and SoybeansSoybean with Corn Chicken Soup
White Beans	White Beans with Sesame Sauce
Red Beans	Five Grain RiceRed Bean Puree with Orange Peel Dessert
Black Beans	Braised Pork Trotter in Black Vinegar

This, we have to say, is by no means an exhaustive list. There are many more dishes on our menu, but in the interest of saving you the need to read through our list, we have condensed it into the most popular ones amongst the mummy community.

Benefits

With our very own in-house dietitian planning all our meals, we strive to provide well-balanced meals that incorporate and strike a balance between both traditional and fusion dishes. We are proud to bring you a wide variety of dishes that see very minimal repetition and, on top of that, are breastfeeding-friendly with milk-boosting ingredients incorporated throughout. We also review our menu from time to time based on clients’ feedback and requests. 

You can rest assured that we will provide you with a varied experience from one meal to the next. Our aim is to keep you nourished and support you during recovery while you attend to your little bundle of joy.

If you or any of your friends are about to give birth or about to start confinement, do let them in on the benefits of the power-packed goodness of beans…and also let them in on the secret to a more pleasant post-pregnancy recovery – Tian Wei Signature’s maternity food delivery packages!
Should you and your friends be interested in trying our menu and confinement soup package, feel free to contact us at +65 6727 5599 or e-mail us at [email protected].