For a healthy plant-based diet, you should build on a foundation of protein and fiber. Beans are the best foundation for that. They are a real superfood. They are great sources of protein and fiber. There are so many ways to enjoy beans! Here is a menu of opportunities. You can click the links and you may need to scroll down a bit to get to the color pictures and info:
Build meals around them
You can make beans exciting by adding to them:
Tomato sauces or paste
Salsas can be store-bought, but are very high in sodium. You can make your own that can differ greatly from store-bought salsas.)
Horseradish
Tofu,
Just add beans instead of dead animal meat.
Refried beans: do your own or buy them. Be aware of the sodium in canned beans.
Bean burgers
You can buy them already made or make em yourself
Bean balls
Bean balls and pasta are an excellent combination for protein. They are commercially available, or you can make em yourself.
Soups are opportunities for all kinds of combinations. You can buy beans only soups
or the main ingredient in soups with vegetables or added to vegetable soups. You can buy quite a variety!
You can make your own soups.You can use store veggie broths or your own style of seasoning blend. Soups also provide healthy hydration.
You can buy them in packs, canned, or jarred. Be aware that anything packaged, canned, or jarred will probably be high in sodium. There are a lot of produced soups that are skimpy on ingredients while high on sodium.
Beans for Breakfast!
Get the day off to a good start. Avoid the high cholesterol of things like bacon and eggs.
Ways to cook beans
Canned or jarred beans are ready to go. Just open them. They are usually high in sodium. You can get them in low or no sodium, but they aren’t that common.
You can cook them stovetop, microwaved or baked.
Dried Beans
You can cook lentils (not beans), mung beans, and adzuki beans without soaking first.
The rest of the beans require soaking and cooking time. The easiest soaking is overnight or 4-12 hours during the day.
Stovetop cooking of soaked dried beans requires over an hour of simmering depending on the bean and simmer heat. Lentils, adzuki beans, mung beans and split peas cook in less than an hour.
Pressure cookers or quick cookers come in two basic types:
Manual-this requires monitoring and adjusting the cooker to keep the steam heat at full pressure.
Automatic-you press a few buttons to tell the cooker to pressure cook if it has other functions and tell it how long to cook. It will keep the steam heat at full pressure for you. When the cooking time ends, the cooker switches to warm mode or turns itself off. For soaked dried beans, pressure cookers take less than half the time than stovetop cooking.
Be aware that the pressure cooker can only cook about half the capacity rating. For example, a three-quart pressure cooker can only cook about 1 1/2 quarts of food.
For more detailed instructions on the art of cooking beans, here is a NY Times article.
Environmental notes:
At a healthy one cup of beans per day, you will use 2 cans per week and 104 cans per year. That’s a lot of trash that needs to be recycled.
Dried beans usually come in plastic bags or boxes. They minimize trash.
Cooking beans stove-top produces heat. This is good if it’s cold outside. It warms the house. If it is warm or hot outside, it will warm the house and may require air conditioning to remove the heat. To shorten cooking time by half or more and reduce the amount of heat generated, soak the beans beforehand and use a pressure cooker. They generate very little outside heat.
The Good stuff in beans
Protein
Protein is essential for development, and maintaining muscle mass and other bodily functions..
The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. This is only an eyeball estimate. A more accurate allowance would factor in your height, weight, muscle/fat ratio, sex, age, and physical activity. The RDA is a good reference point. Depending on the bean, one cup will get you about 14-16 grams of protein.
Fiber
Fiber is essential for healthy digestion, and that can lower the risk of colon cancer and hemorrhoid problems. It is a prebiotic for the nurturing of “good” or probiotic bacteria. Our immune system is rooted in our gut, so a healthy gut is essential for good health.
The National Academy of Medicine gives the following daily fiber recommendations for adults:
- 21 grams for women older than age 50.
- 25 grams for women age 50 or younger.
- 30 grams for men older than age 50.
- 38 grams for men age 50 or younger.
One cup of beans has about 12-16 grams of fiber (dead animal meats have no fiber at all), with only around 200 calories and no cholesterol.
Beans are a good start towards the minimums for protein and fiber.
Fart gas
Gas is natural and healthy, but beans can cause increased flatulence. Soaking them first and then cooking them well can prevent or minimize it. Other things can cause gas. There are ways to aid better digestion. This article explains.
Why a vegan or near-vegan plant-based diet?
It will benefit your health and avoid contributing to the obscene suffering that food animals endure throughout their lives and deaths. It also avoids the pollution that factory farms produce.
Here’s to your health!