Bags of Beans

I don't need exotic superfoods. The humble legume is super enough.

Dear Healthy Jew,

Superfoods are more popular than ever. Gogi berries, hemp seeds, and even blueberries are touted as foods that aren’t simply nutritious but deliver specific healthy effects. Some add energy and vitality, others will prevent or even cure diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

I’m not so into the superfood mania. First of all, the scientific evidence is often far more tenuous than the advertising would suggest. Furthermore, many non-super foods have similar nutrient profiles to their more swanky colleagues, and are linked with the same positive health outcomes, but are far more affordable and accessible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Harvard Health reports in an article titled Superfood or Superhype? that the term probably originated from marketers promoting bananas in the 1910’s - not from qualified scientists or dietitians.

I also don’t want to hinge my health on foods that only a small section of humankind can find, afford, and care to eat. I prefer eating healthfully as a regular member of my community and society, which includes eating affordable foods that are found in most grocery stores. It also means being able to eat out by friends and family, and for them to want to eat by us.

Gogi berries - life changing event, or just another healthy food? Image by Didier Descouens - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sustainability is another important factor. I want to build my diet around foods that are easy to grow, store, and transport. Locally grown is even better. If I can help it, I don’t want to demand more life from the world than it can naturally share with me. (Last week I explained the spiritual importance of living together with the rest of the biosphere.) Unfortunately, many (but not all) popular superfoods don’t fit the bill; there’s a reason they are exotic. And few are grown local.

Finally, a diet composed of non-super but regular-healthy foods has more of a chance of becoming a lasting way of life. Most super things don’t last very long; life is mostly regular. Even the most super vacation ends and the regular schedule returns. The key to living well is for regular days and foods to be fulfilling and healthful, not to depend on special times or foods to keep me feeling super. In addition, the more money and energy I invest on superfoods, the greater the letdown will be if the rest of my dismal diet delivers dismal results. Chances are that I’ll eventually give up on the superfood too.

Therefore, at Healthy Jew we’re wary of promoting unusual superfoods that bestow a special status upon their eaters. We prefer to investigate how eating well can make us into healthy and balanced members of our communities.

One class of affordable, accessible, and non-super foods is legumes, a broad family of plants that includes beans, peas, and lentils of all species, sizes, and colors. For many people, beans are relegated to the weekly Sabbath cholent, and even then are thought to be the primary cause of post-cholent digestive distress and general heaviness. But in truth, a wonderful way to grow in health is to incorporate these versatile foods into everyday eating.

Cholent with beans: cooked for a whole day with fatty meat. Image by Gilabrand - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

If there’s anything unusually super about legumes¹, it’s their unique capability to cross the macronutrient aisle and provide copious amounts of both protein and carbohydrates, the organic compounds that respectively build and power our bodies. They are also the only plants that add an essential nutrient to the soil in which they’re grown: most soil nitrogen, one of the three elements necessary for all plant life (together with phosphorus and potassium), is “fixed” from the air by legumes. (More on this another time.)

What about the post-chulent-like flatulence? For most people it’s simply a matter of time. Start with once or twice a week, and slowly build up. It might take a few months, but your digestive tract will probably learn to process beans just fine – especially outside of fatty, overcooked cholent.

Now would be the time to segue into easy recipes for delicious chickpea patties, lentil bread, and split-pea soup. I deeply apologize, but I’m incapable of following instructions for most recipes (or most other things in life, for that matter). Instead, I’ll describe my extremely basic method of bean-based living which you might wish to adapt according to your culinary capabilities.

When shopping, I always keep an eye out for sales on any sort of dried legume that looks pot worthy. In all honesty, you can probably skip this step, because most legumes are so cheap per meal – a fraction of the price of chicken, fish, and meat – that a dollar or two more for a few pounds won’t make a noticeable dent in your food budget.

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The evening before bean day, I gather whatever beans I find hanging around the kitchen. Usually the harvest consists of about five pounds of chickpeas and another few of white and navy beans, but the species and percentages often vary. I then soak the beans in water overnight (at least 8 hours). They’ll easily double in size, so I make sure there’s plenty of water. (Lentils and peas can be soaked for shorter, and might not need soaking at all.)

In the morning, I check for buggy beans and the odd pebble. With a little practice, the bad beans have become very easy to spot. I might end up throwing out a whole bunch or barely any at all.

I then dump the beans in a large pot. (We have a specially designated pot that we don’t use for either meat or milk, so kosher law permits eating from it with both meat and milk.) After adding hot water to about an inch above bean-level, I turn the range on high until the water spills over together with the white foam that anyone who ever boiled beans will know well. The water and foam usually put out the fire or induction, so I clean up the mess, spoon out the foam, and continue cooking on a low flame. If you’re more on top of things than me, you can skip a step and go straight from the high flame to low flame without any spilling.

How long to cook? It depends on the legume. Chickpeas could take three hours, other beans a bit less, and lentils as quick a half an hour. The idea if for them to be soft but not yet mushy. It’s not rocket science, and way easier than deciding if the meat if still rare or already dried out.

Cooked beans. No big deal.

When the beans are cooled, I spoon them into plastic bags, one 8-oz cup per bag. Cooked beans don’t last too long in the fridge, so most of the bags go straight home to their corner of the freezer. Beans love to hang out in the freezer.

Beans waiting patiently to enter the freezer.

Over the next month or so, most mornings I pull out a bag of beans to defrost. Over the course of the day, I might plop them into soup, pour on them gravy, mix them into a salad, or, in a pinch, anoint them with olive oil and eat them just like that. Either way, with very little effort and money, I have ready at hand a handy source of protein and carbohydrate that fits right into most meals.

One Suggestion: Eat lots of legumes. They might not be glamorous superfoods, but are as super as healthy foods can get.

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Be well,

Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman

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1. Some reputable sources, such as Harvard Health, indeed list legumes as superfoods together with salmon, nuts, and other common foods. I’m fine with redefining the term to include regular healthy foods, but I’d still rather not stick the “super” label to anything.