>>...soak or not soak shouldn’t be a huge deal.

It certainly is with red kidney beans. They contain a good bit of phytohemagglutinin (more than any other bean) which at a minimum can cause gastric upset. I make NOLA style red beans somewhat regularly, had been toying with the notion of just dumping the beans into an instant pot, but did a little research first...

That said, yeah, we need a lot of protein (amino acids) — and more as we get older. When younger, we ‘recycle’ amino acids fairly efficiently. This gets worse past 60, so we need to eat more. I’ve recently learned that there’s a maximum amount that can be absorbed from a single meal (about a gram per lb. of body weight). For someone 180lbs, 180g is about 6oz, and for reference a standard tin of tuna these days is 4oz, and beans are about 20–25% protein by weight.