Tag Archives: BEANS

Beans are the most underrated food in the American foodscspe.

Beans belong to the legume family. Legumes are plants that grow in pods. The term “pulse” refers to the dry, edible seeds harvested from these legume plants. The word pulses is a generic category for beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peas.

🟢Seafood Stew • The Joys of Freshly Prepared.

Americans love convenience. A quick snack to grab and go. A pouch to throw in the microwave that is ready to eat in five minutes. Our American food culture is based on convenience. Perhaps that why so many Americans have so little interest in cooking.

There’s plenty of joy in the taste of freshly prepared but there’s nothing convenient about cooking from scratch.

What does it take to cook? It takes time. And skill. And financial means. And commitment. And patience. Cooking is the opposite of convenience. The US leads the globe in the development and marketing of ultra-processed. And I don’t see our passion for #UPF fading any time soon.

Consider the time and labor required to put that seafood stew together! For starters, I needed to assemble 15 ingredients which included a good brand of imported Italian pelati (peeled tomatoes), some cod and shrimp, jarred roasted peppers, olive oil, an honest baguette, and the usual aromatics – onion, fennel, parsley, garlic. And I decided to use heritage white beans so they needed to be prepared before I could start. All that before I could walk into the kitchen and begin the job of washing, chopping, cooking, and cleaning up.

The nutrition label is my best approximation of a serving based on the recipe that inspired me. Roughly speaking, the proportions serve 4 to 6 people and the Facts Label reflect nutrients for 4 servings.

Salted to taste with just the right amount to highlight the other flavors but never so much that salt overpowers. There’s a special forces unit of the food police that monitors compliance with Dietary Guidelines and they will bang on my head for using too much salt. Aside from that, however, there’s not much else for the unit to complain about. Good fiber. Good protein. And lots of potassium.

Why would anyone work as hard as I did to put that beautiful mixture of fish and aromatics and tomato and beans on the plate? Because the joys of freshly prepared are no more and no less than the pleasure we humans derive from fueling our bodies with food that tastes really really good.

🟡 Mexican Black Beans • Convenience & Salt

Chefs love salt and so do home cooks like me. Never too much salt. But always Just enough so the meals and main dishes we put on the table taste good.

I like convenience and these Mexican Black Beans work for me. You’ll find a couple of pouches in my pantry so when I need to I can put a meal together quickly. Like the shrimp tacos I make using frozen shrimp. Or a meal of rice and black beans and some leftover chicken. 

The ingredient list reads like what I use for scratch cooking. The degree of processing is just different. Powdered onion and garlic instead of intact aromatics. Seed oil instead of olive oil. Since the product is industrially formulated with 5 or more ingredients, technically it would be classified as ultra-processed. But clean labeled convenience products made with intact ingredients are always acceptable in my kitchen.

I grew up eating Mexican street food and have always liked the taste of beans. Dietitians and food labelers get all hung up in the discussion of VEGGIES vs PROTEIN food groups. Why do they get so hung up? Because one food can’t be present in two groups. As for me, I don’t have that problem. I say beans or pulses can fit in both groups. Then I sit down and enjoy my dinner.

These Mexican black beans have a moderate amount of salt. How do you know if the amount is moderate? Check the label. A low amount of sodium would be 10% DV. A high amount would be 20%. These Mexican bean are right in the middle at 14%. And that’s just the right amount to taste good to me.

The food police folks will argue the product has too much salt. And that’s technically accurate.  To market a food product as “healthy”, the DV should be <10%. As I’ve learned however in my exploration of the disconnect between what the experts tell us to eat & the real food I actually, most of the convenience products that can be labeled “healthy” don’t taste good to me.

Finally for those of you who relate better to numbers than to words, my favorite food app  GoCoCo scores the product 10/10.

🟢 Roasted Chickpeas. PlantBased. Fatty. Salty. Tasty.


Food addiction has never made sense to my simplistic mind. I know it’s trendy and fashionable but I just don’t get it. For the record, I took The Yale Food Addiction Scale, a series of questions designed specifically to assess signs of addictive-like eating behavior and I passed with flying colors. I love food. And I love to eat. And that’s what qualifies me on the YFAS tells as addicted!

If however there was ever a food that sort of qualified in my mind or my gut as “addictive” it’s those homemade roasted chickpeas pictured above. Lucky for me it’s really time consuming and tedious to make them myself. And lucky for me too that those convenience branded off the shelf products just don’t cut it. My home made beauties just taste so much better.

The ingredient list for my home made version reads – chickpeas, olive oil, salt. That’s as simple and straightforward as you can get.

Marketeers sell the benefits. And benefits are communicated with as many certification stickers as the designer can fit on package. Check out the healthy section of the supermarket and you’ll see a shout out for health claims and authenticity claims on every package of roasted chickpeas. Gluten Free. Grain Free. Nut Free. Vegan. NonGMO, Dairy Free. High Fiber. Plant-based Protein.

Industrial formulators love flavors. So it’s easy to spot a selection of flavor additives on package roasted chickpea products. I’ve noted cane sugar, natural flavor, citric acid, rosemary extract. And for extra pizazz I’ve seen innovative additions like balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper.

The advantage of course to the package product is convenience. Opening a package and gobbling it down is neither time consuming or tedious.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

There are so many certification stickers on some of the brands there’s hardly room for anything else. I’m assuming manufacturers put certifications on their products to promote sales. But have you ever wondered why certifications sell? The question has puzzled me for some time because I’m not attracted by a certification. But I think I may have finally figured out why.

I’m used to food categories and nutrients because I been food obsessed since birth and I used to be a dietitian. Imagine however how different the food world looks if you’ve grown up in a food culture that provided no hands on experience with food or access to nutrition education.

Suppose you don’t already know that a chickpea and a garbanzo bean are two different names for the same plant seed. Or if you’ve never realized that chickpeas can be sold in different stages of processing? Dried, packaged, and minimally processed. Processed and canned with salt. Or ultra-processed, roasted, packaged, and marketed in brightly colored packaged covered with certifications.

I already know that all chickpeas no matter the degree of processing are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, vegan, plant based, and a food source of fiber. For me it’s just common sense. But what I’ve come to appreciate is that there is a sizable number of my fellow Americans who are not as food literate as I am.

🟢Green Split Pea Soup. Too much salt.

Winter is soup weather. The colder it get outside, and trust me here in New York’s Hudson Valley it can get pretty chilly, the more I appreciate a bowl of steaming hot soup. Warms me up from the inside out.

My ingredient list is simple. Green split peas, water, mirepoix (onion, carrot, fennel), olive oil, salt. It’s a tradition recipes made from scratch with no assistance from any processed or ultra-processed products so the recipes gets a green 🟢 dot.

I think I just heard someone ask what is a mirepoix? Mirepoix is a French word and it’s the basic flavor enhancement made for much of classic French cuisine. The French version consists of onion, carrot, celery. But the concept is global, infinitely mutable, and every traditional culinary cuisines uses some form of aromatic vegetable flavor base. It’s how cooks and chefs enhanced flavor prior to the industrial food era.

The taste of home made split pea soup can’t be captured in any canned or instant soup I’ve ever tasted. Cleaner. Fresher. More robust fully developed flavors. I’m not a food scientist so I can’t tell you why however. What I do know is the best quality ingredients make the most flavorful soup.

Industrially formulated soups will sometimes use combinations of aromatic vegetables but today it’s also common to use artificial or natural flavors. Industrial processors find it easier and cheaper to pick and choose from the myriad of flavorings now available.

Whether you are an home cook like me or an industrial manufacturer, the problem with soup is the same. Too much salt. Soup is notorious for being high in sodium. My home made version uses less than commercial brands do, but it’s still a lot. And for sure when it comes to using the word “healthy” on a product label, “healthy” is the Kiss of Death ☠️.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Within our regulatory framework, there are multiple perspectives on how to evaluate salt and health outcomes. The health problem with salt is the relationship between sodium and blood pressure in some people. And the problem with high blood pressure is it can increase the risk for cardiovascular vascular disease. It’s at this point regulatory guidelines can get messy. Using the example of my homemade soup, let’s take a look at just how messy …

❌ The Nutrition Facts Label reflect a high sodium value. High means a cup provided more than 20% of the DV (Daily Value). The Dietary Guidelines has set the value for sodium at 2300mg per day using CDRR (Chronic Disease Risk Reduction) methodology.

✅ The FDA has established a Voluntary Sodium Reduction program for food processors and restaurants. This program evaluates sodium using grams per 100 for shelf stable soup. Without boring you with calculations, my homemade spite pea soup is already below target for all three categories – restaurant, frozen, and shelf stable soups.

It’s a dilemma and a bit of a kerfuffle. Is the food police going to come after me because when I salt to taste, I increase my risk for cardio vascular problems? Or should I get a standing ovation because I’m doing better than most of my fellow Americans because I my split pea soup is homemade?

🟡Grilled Chicken, Red Peppers, Pinto Beans, Pasta. Moderate salt.

Food is complex. Nutrition is wicked hard. Cutting through all those layers is no small feat, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

Americans are used to starting with nutrients. So my first suggestion is to forget nutrients for a moment and focus on the food. Those gorgeous red peppers. The grilled chicken strips. That occasional pinto bean that is peeking out here and there. Or the pasta. The Italians call the pasta “elicodale” which translates into English as spiral shaped and as you can see those deep ridges create a sort of spiral pattern.

The grilled chicken dish is freshly prepared with traditional ingredients. But as noted above, nearly a third of the calories come from ingredients which are classified as ultra-processed – NOVA Group 4 UPF. These ingredients are the grilled chicken, the vegetable broth, and the tomato basil sauce.

These three items are industrially formulated convenience products and all were developed relatively recently. Home cooks like me know that making vegetable broth or red sauce from scratch takes time. And cutting up and grilling chicken breast strips is messy. Scratch cooking tastes better, but life intercedes so I’m okay using industrially formulated products as long as they are made with simple intact ingredients and do not contain flavors, colors, texture modifiers, or acellular nutrients.

The 29% calories UPF noted above is the sum of the calories from the vegetable broth, grilled chicken, and tomato basil sauce. The yellow 🟡 dot means I used ultraprocessed products but each of the products I used are acceptable. To me.

Focusing on food is easy. For those not used to home cooking, it may take some practice but it’s a skill anyone can develop. It just takes practice.

Focusing on nutrients is not easy.  The Nutrition Facts Label can be helpful for assessing the three nutrients that health professionals recommend limiting. As you’ll note from the label above, the sodium percentage stands out from the other Daily Value percentages. Palatability is as important to me as health when I cook at home so I salt to taste. Although I use salt in moderation, the food police will still bang on my head for using too much salt. Compared to the high sodium valued seen in restaurant meals or Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) however, my moderate use looks a lot better.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

American who pay attention to labels are used to putting nutrients first because that’s the message labels have been reinforcing for the last 50 years. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been nutrient focused for 5 decades! It wasn’t until December 2024 that a “meaningful amount” of food became a component for using the word “healthy” on food product labels. It’s a positive step however and I applaud the FDA for finally acknowledging that food does count.

🟢Mayocoba Beans. Freshly prepared. Salt to taste.



Is it just me or am I the only one who loves beans because they can taste good?

Pictured above  are some beautiful Mayocoba beans I made for a holliday dinner last year as an accompaniment for roasted duck. Mayocoba beans are savory enough to stand on their own yet earthy enough to share the plate with a robust partner. Like roast duck.

The Mayocoba bean is a native of Peru. Mayocobas grow many places now including California which is where I source from. My taste for savory beans developed early on because I grew up eating Mexican street food and New England baked beans on a regular basis. We probably go through about 20 pounds a year per person. The average American on the other hand eats closer to 6 pounds.

Beans do need tender loving care to achieve tastiness. Heirloom beans, some culinary skill, an honest olive oil, the right amount of salt, flavorful aromatics like onion, carrot, fennel, and a handful of parsley.

Why heirloom beans? Because these varieties tend to have more nuanced flavor profiles than commodity crops.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

 Beans have officially displaced kale as the new nutrition obsession as per a headline that crossed my feed recently. My dietitian colleagues, the advisory committee for DGA2025, a growing number of Influencers, and the combined marketing muscle of American farmers who grow them – everyone seems to agree that a healthy dietary pattern includes eating a lot more beans.

If those Mayocoba beans pictured above were a product however I couldn’t market them as healthy because I used too much salt. At the same time, the amount I used meets the FDA Phase II sodium goal for restaurants.

In my view, we’re not going to be able to persuade Americans to eat more beans if we ignore palatability.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to make a respectable place for moderation within the healthy model?

 

 

🟡Actual Veggies Burger. Quickly assembled. Tastes good.


Veggie burgers were born during the 1980s. The rational was simple – concentrate or extract the protein component of a plant instead of using muscle meat. Next enhance using texture modifiers, colors, flavors to form a flattened, rounded patty that resembled a ground beef paddy. These original veggie burgers were clearly ultra-processed. 

An alternative method was to use an intact food like black beans or mushrooms. Since I am partial to the intact food approach, I have always favored for black bean version. So when I found a new black bean burger “chef crafted with caramelized onion”, I decided to give Actual Veggies Black Bean Burger a try.

Like every other veggie burger in the freezer unit of an American supermarket, Actual Veggies meet the criteria for an UPF – an industrially formulated mass produced food product with considerably more than 5 ingredients.

There are good reasons to be cautious with UPF. A decade of research, most of which has been done outside the US, has established significant correlation between percentage of ultra processed food products in the dietary pattern and negative health outcomes. On the other hand, avoiding UPF means systematically avoiding convenience products and about 70% of the food currently sold in our supermarkets.

Not an easy decision especially if you’re a working mom or dad and depend on convenience to feed the family. Even tough for folks like me who prefer the taste of freshly prepared but welcome a break from the daily grind of scratch cooking. So the question then becomes, where do we draw the line between acceptable convenience and frivolous indulgence.

The best place to start thinking about making a decision is to start with an ingredient list.

The Actual Veggies burger list reads as follows: Black Bean, Carrot, Parsnip, Oat, Yellow Onion, Red Onion, Red Pepper, Chickpea Flour, Lemon, Spice Blend (Ovata Seed, Kosher Salt, Garlic Powder, Paprika, Chili Powder, Cumin, Black Pepper).

There are no added colors, no added artificial or natural flavors, and no texture modifying agents like xanthan gum or lecithin or methylcellulose. On visual inspection, I can see the black beans are intact and I can see small flecks of red pepper. The rest of those vegetables however have lost their individuality and become part of the puréed mass that holds the burger together.

I do see one “unfamiliar” ingredients I don’t keep in my kitchen cabinet – ovata seed. In fact I’d never heard of ovata seed until I read the ingredient list. Here’s what came back from a Google search. Plantago ovata is a common medicinal plant widely cultivated in tropical regions of the world. The outer seed coat of P. ovata, obtained by cleaning the seeds, contains soluble and insoluble fibre in a ratio of 7:3, making products containing P. ovata husk an ideal source of health-beneficial fibre.

Time savings are significant – I didn’t have to make my own black bean burger or bake my own brioche bun or mix up a batch of home made mayonnaise.

There’s a taste test to follow of course, but in terms of degree of processing, Actual Veggies burger gets a yellow dot. 🟡

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Always important to remember that people eat food not ingredients. That means the burger needs to be all dressed up before I take my first bite or run the numbers. Besides the Actual Veggies, I used an artisan brioche bun from a local Northeast regional baker, some olive oil for frying. I also added a couple slices of tomato, some mayo, and lettuce.

I’m happy to report that my Actual Veggies burger passed my taste test.

The calories clocked in around 400 / 450. Nutrient analysis reflects 11 grams protein (plant based protein for the sustainable crowd), 8 grams dietary fiber, and a serving of vegetables (Actual Veggies, lettuce, tomato).

The sodium does look high and there’s not enough potassium to balance the potassium:sodium ratio. The sodium comes from ultra-processed foods (my brioche bun, the mayo, the Actual Veggie). But honestly, if I had done it all from scratch, the sodium would have roughly comparable.

The CDRR for sodium is 2300mg per day independent of age, gender, or lifestyle. The Advisory Committee DGA2025 meeting #6 this year made a sobering assessment regarding sodium reduction in US dietary patterns. Sodium exceeds 2300mg even when criteria are applied to identify lower nutrient density foods. My reading of that assessment is Americans are going to have to adjust to a No Added Salt dietary pattern to comply with the CDRR. And I’m not sure setting such an austere goal is helpful. Or even attainable without enlisting the food police.