When making yourself a lunch, you might see your pet staring up at you. Some people hate it and train their pets not to beg, and some indulge their pets’ natural curiosity. Many human foods can benefit dogs, although some might be harmful. If you want to know if you can share your food with your pet, you aren’t alone. There are many great meals you eat that your pet might be able to benefit from as well.
If you have a bowl of green beans nearby and you want to give your dog some, you should know that green beans are great treats for dogs. Most beans offer dogs many health benefits, and green beans can provide quite a few nutrients for your pet as well. However, if you’re aiming to give your dog some extra beans from your own plate, you should know that the way people prepare green beans for themselves can often be toxic for dogs. Additional salt, butter, or other seasonings can not only cause digestive issues, but some seasonings are poisonous to dogs.
Are Green Beans Safe for Dogs to Ingest?
Raw green beans are completely safe for dogs to eat without anything added to them. Raw green beans offer your dog the most benefits, but they can ingest raw green beans, frozen green beans, or cooked green beans.
Green beans have many vitamins and minerals, but they can risk a choking hazard. Anytime you give your dog human food, it’s a good idea to cut it up into 1-inch pieces, even something as small as green beans. Dogs can easily swallow whole green beans and end up choking on their food, but you want to make sure your dog can enjoy human food snacks, so preparing green beans right is vital when giving some to your pet.
If you want to give your pet green beans, you have to make sure you make them in a way that is safe for your dog’s digestive system. Green beans can be an excellent source of many vitamins and minerals that your dog needs to live.
Health Benefits Green Beans Can Provide Your Dog
As stated earlier, green beans can offer your pet tons of health benefits. Most vegetables are safe for your dog to eat and offer plenty of beneficial nutrients, and green beans fit in this beneficial category and can be considered a super-human-food-choice of snack for your pet.
These green veggies offer your dog the benefits of high water content and tons of fiber. Fiber has many health benefits, but one of the best is that it can help you feel full for longer, so if your pet has to lose weight, this is an excellent way to combat the extra hunger they might experience in that process. These veggies are also low in calories, making them excellent treats for dogs that are obese or dogs that regularly suffer from digestive health issues.
In addition to fiber and water, green beans are full of plenty of helpful vitamins. Vitamin B6, vitamin c, vitamin A, and vitamin K can all be found in a good serving of green beans. All of these are essential to your dog’s health, and finding snacks that can offer your dog these nutrients is an excellent way to make the most out of their meals.
Green beans are chock full of flavonols, quercetin, kaempferol, and beta carotenes. Unless you’re a dietician or just really into vitamins and minerals, chances are you don’t know what any of those words mean. While you don’t have to learn every aspect of the benefits of green beans, understanding what benefits your dog’s health can open up a world of knowledge you didn’t know you could benefit from knowing.
Understanding how these things help your dog can help you make more informed decisions when you’re buying them food, treats, or snacks.
Vitamins and How They Nourish Your Dog’s Health
There are so many reasons to give your dog green beans as a healthy snack, although most dog owners might not understand what a lot of these nutrients do for their pet’s health. Consider this section a cheat sheet on understanding the benefits of specific vitamins and nutrients, and you will have a better idea of what makes your dog healthy.
Green beans provide anti-oxidants in all of these health benefits, especially with the aid of the beta carotenes and flavonols. Flavonoids are excellent anti-oxidants and have become popular in veterinary medicine for their anti-inflammatory and cancer-fighting properties. Flavanols are also associated with vitamin C and are known for their capabilities of promoting good heart health. Kaempferol is another type of flavonoid found in green beans that also aids in fighting cancer, but a bonus is that kaempferol decreases the risk of chronic disease.
Earlier, the word ‘quercitin’ was mentioned, and this is a type of flavonoid that’s most commonly found in vegetables. It’s great at fighting allergic reactions and autoimmune problems. This flavonoid, in particular, plays a significant role in green beans, and is the reason this vegetable is so good for dogs with digestive problems. A bonus property this flavonoid offers is that it aids chronic fatigue, so it can help your dog feel more alert and energetic.
Beta-carotenes are part of the carotenoid family of nutrients, and they are especially good for your dog’s skin and eye health. This helpful nutrient also offers anti-oxidants to aid your dogs health.
Vitamin C is a very powerful vitamin found in green beans and many other healthy vegetables. This specific vitamin offers anti-oxidants that can help your dog fight allergies. Vitamin C is also very helpful when it comes to your dog maintaining a healthy coat, so any dogs with skin issues would benefit from vitamin c rich foods. Collagen production can decrease with age which is part of the reason many dogs have joint issues later in life. This element can increase collagen tissues and therefore help lower your dog’s risk of developing joint issues or aid them with joint issues they already suffer from. Anti-oxidants like vitamin C also boost your dog’s immune system because they can greatly increase the number of antibodies your dog has. This also makes vitamin C an excellent nutrient to use to decrease the risk of your dog developing cancer.
Another super impactful vitamin that green beans offer your dog is vitamin K. This amazing vitamin can strengthen your dog’s heart by aiding their body in regulating normal blood pressure. Vitamin K also helps your pet produce red blood cells in their bone marrow, which helps keep their bone structure strong and simultaneously prevents anemia in your dog. This special effect helps your dog carry oxygen throughout their body which also helps prevent any hardening of their arteries, another vital way vitamin K aids your dog’s heart health.
If you think this is all vitamin K can do, you don’t understand how ambitious this incredibly important vitamin is. This essential element also metabolizes calcium into your dog’s bones which aids their joint health and prevents calcium deposits from occurring in other parts of your dog’s body. If calcium deposits occur in specific areas like their heart, arteries, or some muscles, it can cause detrimental health effects to your dog.
Vitamin K also plays an important role in helping your dog’s blood clot, which can greatly affect their immune system. If your dog’s blood doesn’t clot properly, it can allow dangerous bacterial growth to enter any wounds your pet may have. This is part of why vitamin K can help lessen the risk of your dog developing diseases and helps with their skin inflammation.
The list of the benefits vitamin K offers your dog can go on longer. Still, the last fact this article will mention is that this vitamin is essential in helping your dog metabolize glucose which aids their digestive systems and helps them maintain plenty of energy. This contributes to green beans and their digestive aid to your dog’s health.
All species of vertebrates need vitamin A for numerous reasons. This particular vitamin is stored in your dog’s fat cells, and there is aids their cells in growth and cell division. Vitamin A is an essential component in almost every organ in your dog’s body, and it provides some extra support to your pet’s vision and skin health. However, vitamin A plays an important part in your dog’s overall health because it helps your dog’s brain and skeletal development, powers your dog’s immune system, and protects your dog’s lungs.
Vitamin B6 is another incredible health benefit found in green beans. This essential vitamin is necessary for your dog to maintain proper glucose generation, hormone regulation, and gene activation. This element also aids your dog’s nervous system function and immune response and is responsible for a lot of your dog’s red blood cell regulations.
While all of these previous vitamins are incredibly important parts of your dog’s health, so many minerals are equally as important, and green beans are full of both of these essential nutrients.
An essential mineral for all forms of life is potassium, and green beans happen to provide this mineral. This component helps your dog’s body with electrolytes and maintains homeostasis in your dog’s blood. Potassium works with salt to move water in and out of your pet’s cells so it can regulate their blood’s pH levels to prevent dehydration. Potassium is also a vital aspect of your dog’s nerve impulses, whether they are voluntary or involuntary. That means potassium is necessary for your dog to make any muscle contraction or for its heart to keep a steady rhythm.
Calcium helps your pet maintain proper heart health and helps prevent any heart complication risks from occurring. This component also provides your dog with a balance of dietary calcium and phosphorous so your dog’s bones can develop properly and maintains this growth in a healthy way.
An important macromineral called magnesium is essential for your dog to maintain their best health. Your dog’s body can often naturally produce certain amounts of vitamins or nutrients it needs to function, but it still needs foods to contribute to these nutritional needs. A dog’s body cannot naturally manufacture magnesium, so they must eat foods that have enough magnesium contents to maintain proper health. Magnesium aids your dog’s nerve and muscle functions while it also helps your pet maintain a steady heartbeat. This essential mineral also helps your dog maintain strong bones and aids in the regulation of blood glucose levels. This then helps their body regulate healthy muscle functions and aids them in producing energy and protein.
Iron is another mineral found in green beans that helps your dog with its enzymatic functions and helps them create red blood cells and hemoglobin. This also helps them transport oxygen in hemoglobin which is why iron plays such a significant role in supplying and maintaining oxygen in your dog’s circulatory system.
Health Risks of Green Beans
Green beans really have health risks when they are cooked with other dangerous seasonings or additives. Please do not give your pet any green beans that have anything like garlic powder or onion powder on them, as these seasonings are toxic to dogs. Avoid canned green beans because they usually have higher sodium contents than other forms of green beans. Green beans do not offer many health risks other than these few things.
The Best Way to Serve Green Beans to Your Dog
The best way to give your dog green beans is to purchase fresh green beans just for them and clean them the way you would if you were to eat them.
Frozen green beans are excellent options as well when it comes to giving your pet this healthy treat. However, raw green beans will always offer the most health benefits for your pet. Plain green beans can be mixed with other healthy treats. Some dog owners like to mix these beans with brussels sprouts, carrots, kidney beans, black beans, or sweet potatoes.
You can give your dog a green bean diet where you regularly feed them a bowl of these beans about once a week. Green beans should be given to your pet in moderation, but you can make this a regular weekly treat, but make sure there is no added salt.
Also, if you want to mix in any of the aforementioned healthy human food treats, you should make sure you know how to prepare them correctly before giving them to your dog.
Sweet potatoes, for example, can cause an upset stomach if your dog eats them raw, but cooked sweet potatoes offer your dog the many benefits of all the vitamins and minerals they contain. Similarly, kidney beans and black beans need to be cooked for your dog to be able to eat them and benefit from their nutrients. Also, brussels sprouts offer your dog the most benefits when they’re cooked but not necessarily if they’re boiled, as it can cause them to lose some of their vitamin-rich nutrients.
There are so many ways to prepare green beans for your dog. You just have to ensure you slice them into one-inch pieces and clean them so your dog doesn’t ingest any dangerous bacteria or other gross chemicals or pesticides that could’ve latched onto the vegetable while it makes its way to your local grocery store.
Conclusion
Dog owners love their pets, and while it can be so tempting to share whatever food leftovers are on your plate, it is almost never a good idea to do this. Even when it comes to such a healthy snack as green beans, humans often prepare these foods with added salt, butter, or seasonings that can cause unnecessary harm to your pet.
The best way to give your dog human food is to purchase it specifically with your dog in mind and prepare or cook it in whatever method provides them with the most health benefits possible.
Green beans are somewhat of an elite human food snack because not only do they offer very few health risks, but they don’t need to be cooked to give to your dog. In fact, raw fresh green beans are the healthiest way you can give your dog this treat. All owners have to do is wash these bad boys off and slice them up into bite-sized pieces, and voila, a delicious and nutritious treat for your dog is readily made by their personal chef.
Many pet owners don’t think they have time to prepare certain human foods to be safe enough for their pets, but that’s also why this is such a top-tier human food snack option.
Dog owners need to understand what foods are safe for their dogs, but if they understand why certain foods can better benefit their puppy, then they can begin to understand how to help their dog’s specific health. If your dog struggles with vomiting or diarrhea often, this digestive aid might be an incredible help if you make it a regular part of a weekly diet.
This type of snack can also help their mental health and allow them to develop a closer bond with you, and these are just the smaller bonuses green beans offer dogs.
