Our Infographic takes a look at some of the statistics about preventable diseases over the last few decades in the US, and a history of official food guides over time. It ends with some actionable pieces of advice for folks who find themselves in a less healthy state than they’d like or who simply want to maintain as healthy of a diet as they can. I thought it was very informative. I hope you find it helpful.

It’s the ingenious image of the sweet and simple cupcake that propelled the treats into a $6 billion industry. We’ve all made cupcakes a thousand times. The ingredients are familiar, pronounceable items we always have on hand. Their authenticity helps us feel better about buying our kids and ourselves a $4 cupcake over a lot of other fast food snacks. But really, like most anything we eat nowadays, the cupcake represents global effort of laborers and products from places we don’t tend to think about. Check out this new graphic weighing the ingredients of this trendy personal treat:

Before I knew it, my shopping cart was half-full, and I knew my trip to the store to “pick up a couple things” would likely cost much more than the mission name implied. So it goes when shopping without a list.

$38! I spent $38 essentially on junk. Well, it wasn’t all junk, but the very large majority of it was junk. And by junk in this context I mean things that can’t generally be used to make a meal – sodas, chips, a couple dessert items, some frozen items from the “Snack” case, etc. No ingredients, no staples, no meats, no vegetables.

I loaded up the items in my truck and reflected a bit about the grocery trip, wondering how many times I’ve shopped like this in the past and thought nothing of it. I violated nearly every rule in the book of frugal grocery shopping – I didn’t have a list, I had not planned any meals, I was hungry, etc, etc.

I decided from now on I would try to be an “intentional grocery shopper.” That is, I would do a better job of planning before I went to the store. I would seek out only the things I needed to fit my meal plan and nothing more.

How to Become an Intentional Grocery Shopper

1. Plan meals a week (or two) in advance. One of the easiest ways to plan a shopping list is to work backwards. Start by planning a few meals you and your family would like to have over the next several days, then list the required ingredients for those meals. Check your pantry to see what you have on hand and add any missing items to your grocery list.

2. Always shop with a list. I can’t cite any official study, but experience tells me that when I shop with a list I save money. I also forget less things, which requires a return trip to the store which offers more opportunity to spend unintentionally.

3. Shop once a week. The enforcement of this rule alone will make you a more intentional grocery shopper. If you know this is your once-a-week visit to the grocery store you are more likely to plan and make a complete list so as to avoid a trip again later in the week.

4. Use coupons. I am not the best coupon sorter. Some people seem to have it down to a science – it comes naturally to them. Not me. Still, I could probably save $5 – $10 per trip to the grocery store without even trying just by using the coupons in the current Sunday paper. Imagine the damage I could if I actually invested the time to collect and sort them EVERY Sunday.

Speaking of coupons, have you checked out our Coupon Directory lately?

5. Stay away from the inside of the store. On my most recent trip to the store I did the exact opposite. I avoided produce, meats and dairy and instead wandered the chip and cookie aisles for half an hour. Big mistake – unless I was targeting something very specific. From now on I will stick to the perimeter of the store, for the most part, stocking up on meats and fish, dairy and produce.

What are some tips you use to save money on groceries?

If you’ve been following the news, you know that Big Food successfully lobbied this week to have pizza sauce considered a vegetable under school lunch rules. The industry also managed to block most of the nutritional changes that to school lunches that doctors and dieticians had been recommending for years, virtually guaranteeing that America’s schools will continue to serve processed, unhealthy garbage to our children. If you didn’t know that Big Food wields disproportionate influence in America today, reading this infographic will be a great wakeup call.

Oh, and don’t blame me if your Turkey doesn’t taste quite as good on Thursday…

Home beer making is undergoing a surge in popularity. I believe a combination of factors, including a rising interest in craft beer, more DIY attitudes, and the locavore movement, account for the upwards trend.

I’ve been homebrewing for 6 years, making everything from standard pale ales to beers with ingredients like chocolate, tea, and lime. Throughout this brewing journey, I’ve discovered a few ways to save money that I hope can help out other brewers or potential brewers.

I’ll say upfront that I never advocate getting into homebrewing just for the cost savings. You do it for the creativity, the love of good beer, and because it’s a ton of fun. Think of it more like golf. You do it for the enjoyment and thrill of achievement. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to save money, however.

Here are some of the best ways to save money on homebrewing:

1. Go all-grain

Almost all brewers start out brewing with malt extract, a syrupy substance that is easy to use and requires very little equipment. A step up from that is all-grain brewing, the way the pros do it. Whether or not all-grain saves you money depends on the brewer you talk to.

It will be cheaper for you to brew each batch because grains are cheaper than malt extract. Where those savings get erased, however, is when you start to geek out with equipment.

There are some all-grain systems that look like they were built by NASA. They are automated, pump-driven, and very expensive. It is difficult to pay back the cost of these systems.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the MacGyver systems, pieced together from old pots and coolers and requiring lots of manual labor. Don’t be fooled by these ragtag set-ups though, these brewers often make the best beer. They also pay back the cost of their equipment much quicker than the NASA brewers.

It’s also worth checking out the brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) technique, a newer method of all-grain brewing popularized by Australian homebrewers. The cost of entry into BIAB is dirt cheap as all you need is a pot and a large bag.

2. Buy ingredients in bulk

This is the Sam’s Club method of brewing, and mainly applies to buying grains and hops. Go to the homebrew store and you’ll pay around $1.60/lb for malted barley. You can save on that by buying malt in bulk, and can easily get your cost down to $0.70/lb.

Most homebrew stores will sell you grain in bulk. Here’s a directory to help you find a local shop. Prices can vary dramatically between stores, so shop around if you have that luxury. Another great place it look is a local brewery or brewpub. Go down there, order a pint, and ask if they will add an extra grain sack to their order.

As an example of the cost savings, if you brew 5 gallon all-grain batches that average 5% alcohol (riiiight) and brew once per month, you could save approximately $100/year by buying grain in bulk.

Hops can be bought in bulk as well. Buy them retail and you’ll pay in the range of $1.50-$3.00 per ounce. A place like Hops Direct will let you buy them by the pound for around $0.60 per ounce. Hop-head brewers who are fond of pale ales and IPAs will see some big savings here. You could easily keep another $75-$150/year in your pocket by buying hops in bulk.

You could even take things a step further and grow hops yourself. Growing wheat or barley is much more difficult, but there are the adventurous homebrewers who do it.

3. Reuse your yeast

Yeast isn’t cheap. Current prices are about $8 for a vial of liquid yeast from one of the main suppliers. Take a tip from the pros and reuse your yeast.

By reusing, you can turn one pack into dozens. If you brew once per month, you could save another $96/year on yeast alone.

From one yeast vial I typically get 4 fresh containers after harvesting. Each one of those containers can be used for another batch of beer, where the yeast can be harvested into four more containers. You can see how it adds up – you could easily have a fridge jammed packed with yeast!

If you need help with this technique, I have an instructional video on yeast washing.

4. Focus on less expensive beer styles

If you’re a hop-head like me, sometimes it’s good to take a hop detox. Hoppy beers like IPAs are hugely popular with homebrewers, but they can be expensive to brew. Buying hops in bulk is one option to save money, but you could also explore the many fantastic minimally-hopped beer styles.

Try a brown ale, porter, or German hefeweizen. The first two highlight the malt, while the last highlights the yeast. Here are some of my favorites from those styles:

• Brown ales: Avery Ellie’s Brown, Surly Bender, Sierra Nevada Tumbler
• Porters: Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter, Dechutes Black Butte, Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
• German Hefeweizens: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, Ayinger Brauweiss, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse

I’m convinced that someday we’ll see a malt-head revolution. Maybe you’ll help lead it?

5. Embrace DIY

If you’re the handy type, you can save a ton of money by building equipment yourself. While you don’t need to know how to weld to homebrew, it’s a huge asset. Not so good with tools? I’m sure you have a beer drinking friend who is. Catch my drift?

Here are a few project you can do yourself to save some money:

• Mash tun
• Brew stand
• Kegerator
• Kettle accessories (valves, sight glasses, etc)
• Hop filter

Besides saving some dough, there’s something really rewarding about making something that makes beer.

6. Brew smaller batches

The typical size batch of homebrew is 5 gallons, or about 50 12 oz. bottles. Sometimes that is just too much. I’ve made a few batches that didn’t turn out so hot and was stuck with 2 cases of crappy beer.

There’s no law that says you need to make 5 gallon batches, so try brewing 1-3 gallon batches. You’ll save money and if the beer stinks, you’re not stuck with a lot of it. This advice is especially useful for those “test batches” of some crazy beer idea you had at the bar.

7. Brew lower alcohol beers

There is a big cost difference in brewing a 12% abv barleywine and a 4% abv English brown ale. I usually brew on the lower end of the abv scale to save money and because I don’t want that much super strong beer. Try brewing session beers, a term used to describe beers that are lower in alcohol and are more quaffable. My favorite choices are the British ales like milds and bitters.

Homebrewing is a fun hobby I encourage all beer fans to give it a shot. Sure you could spend a fortune on it if you want to, but the cost of entry is low and anyone can make great beer without breaking the bank. Cheers!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI), the U.S. city average price of lean ground beef has risen 43% in the interval between Feb. 2001 and Feb. 2011. If your paycheck has not risen at a similar rate, you are probably feeling the pinch in the check-out line at the supermarket too.

There are many reasons to restrict consumption of meat products, including environmental and health concerns. But for me, the pivotal moment was brought on by pure sticker shock.

A quick rundown of some common grocery list items (Feb 2011 figures from the CPI) makes the price disparity abundantly clear:

• Bacon, sliced, per lb. (453.6 gm) $4.37
• All Pork Chops, per lb. (453.6 gm) $3.48
• Chicken breast, bone-in, per lb. (453.6 gm) $2.29
• All Uncooked Beef Roasts, per lb. (453.6 gm) $4.33
• Bananas, per lb. (453.6 gm) $0.63
• Potatoes, white, per lb. (453.6 gm) $0.61
• Broccoli, per lb. (453.6 gm) $1.89
• Beans, dried, any type, all sizes, per lb. (453.6 gm) $1.34

These items are just a tiny sampling of the products we consume, but they are indicative of the overall price pattern. Sure, there are plenty of expensive fruits and vegetables (imported, organic, and out-of-season items especially), but if you can live without pomegranates and white asparagus you will come out way ahead by loading up on fruits and vegetables and minimizing your meat purchases.

To reap immediate financial benefits, you don’t have to go totally vegetarian—simply reduce the percentage of meat in your diet. Americans tend to eat about twice as much meat as is necessary; the recommended amount is about 50 g/day for an adult female and 65/g day for an adult male—less than the amount in one chicken breast or pork chop. With adult and childhood obesity on the rise, practicing moderation as a family and instilling healthy eating habits is vitally important.

Here are some ways to cut back:

Reduce Portion Size: Instead of cooking a meal with a chicken breast for each person at the table, prepare a large stir-fry with using one chicken breast and loaded up with vegetables. Prepare a large pot of chili with protein-rich beans and a small amount of ground beef, instead of inch-thick hamburgers for the whole family. Cutting back on meat consumption in this way is economical and your family will barely notice.

Use Meat for Flavor: Try a bean soup with a few slices of cooked minced bacon, or a pasta dish with a small amount of crumbled Italian sausage. These types of dishes are very flavorful but only use a few tablespoons of meat in the whole dish.

Skip Lunch Meats: Lunch meats and other highly processed meats like hot dogs are high in nitrates and other preservatives. Studies have shown that high intake of processed meats increases mortality risk. This fact, coupled with the often hefty price tag, makes this choice a non-starter.

Bye-Bye Filet Mignon: Substitute less expensive cuts of meat. Purchase stew meat instead of a pot roast for a satisfying slow-cooker meal, or opt for pork chops instead of t-bones for your next barbecue. Watch out for grocer’s specials so you can stock up on (and freeze) your favorite cuts when they are on sale.

Once a Day, Max: Think of meat as a once-a-day menu item. There is no nutritional need to eat meat as often as many of us do. Having meat with breakfast, lunch, and dinner is an unhealthy and outmoded way of eating.

Meat free Mondays: We can all take a note from Sir Paul and get on board with Meat-Free Mondays, a campaign launched by former Beatle Paul McCartney in an effort to reduce the impact of the meat industry on the environment. The MFM website provides recipes and encouragement to those interested in exploring the environmental, health, and financial benefits of reduced meat intake.

Triple Benefits

There are not many choices we can make that have the huge triple-whammy benefits that lowering meat consumption has.

Environmental—Eating less meat reduces your family’s carbon footprint and helps curb the meat industry’s ever-increasing demand for grains. The insatiable demand for grains leads to pollution, greenhouse gas production and deforestation, and also leaves insufficient grain reserves for human consumption.

Health—Reducing meat consumption lowers your family’s risk of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, stomach ulcers and an host of other medical complaints, according to a U.S. National Cancer Institute study.

Financial—You can realize significant savings over the course of the year by making substitutions and changes in your carnivorous habits. The savings in future health care costs, while unknowable, may be the most important benefit of all.

This article was written by contributing author Laurel Gray.

I have a confession to make. I am a food hoarder. I love to cook, and I try out new recipes almost every day. In the process, I accumulate a lot of food.

To give you an idea of what my pantry looks like, right now I have three kinds of tapioca pearls, six types of dried beans, four kinds of flour, and various partly used bags of barley, quinoa, red lentils, mung beans, dried shitakes, bulgur wheat, and so on. I have stockpiles of canned goods, and over 50 spices.

Taking Back the Pantry

I think it’s time for a shopping hiatus. I recently read an article about a couple trying to go one month without shopping—and I am inspired to give it a shot myself.

According to ConsumerReports.org, the average family of four spends $500 a month on groceries. I don’t know if I can last a whole month, but I intend to whittle down my stores significantly, and lower (or eliminate!) my monthly grocery bill in the process.

There are many good reasons to skip the grocery store run for a while:

• To free up money in your monthly budget to pay down debt or to handle an unexpected expense such as a car repair.
• To survive a period of unemployment or underemployment
• To reduce pantry clutter and use up supplies before they expire
• To combat food inflation

Take the Challenge

Starting today, I am going on my own shopping hiatus to see how long I can last without going to the supermarket. Frugal Dad has decided to take up the gauntlet starting March 1.

If you are considering and attack on your own pantry, here are some ground rules to follow:

• Take Inventory—Take a moment to sort through your food stores, unearth buried items in cupboards, and identify the contents of those mystery packages in the freezer. Discard any items that are unusable or spoiled.
• Research—Using a list of the items you have on hand, hit the internet or scan your cookbook indices for recipes that call for the items you have available.
• Plan ahead—Make a list of dishes that you can prepare using ingredients on hand. Prepare food on weekends so you won’t be tempted to stop by the store after work when you lack motivation.
• Improvise—Make creative substitutions in recipes to use up the supplies you have on hand.
• Shun Dominos—Don’t succumb to expensive delivery or take-out meals in order to supplement your restricted diet. This will defeat your thrifty goals, and thwart your efforts at de-cluttering.
• If All Else Fails—Make Soup! Soup is a great way to use of a hodgepodge of ingredients such as pasta, dried beans, canned vegetables, and dried legumes and grains.

I’ll be reporting back with details of my effort to use up my languishing pantry products. I hope you will be inspired to join me in the shopping hiatus challenge and share your stories. So…Tapioca Soup, anyone?

Whatever the reason, increased food prices are putting a major dent in our household budget. Since we can’t do much about the prices, we have to look for other ways to reduce (or at least keep even) our overall food expense.

Food is a unique budget category in that normally when you are struggling with less income and/or increased costs, the natural inclination is to turn to cheaper alternatives. Unfortunately, as many people are discovering, when it comes to food this means an unhealthy diet.

Think of the cheapest foods at your local grocer – they are likely cheap pastas and boxed processed foods (Ramen noodles, mac and cheese, packages of potato flakes sold as “instant mashed potatoes,” etc). While these foods will do in a pinch, they aren’t exactly healthy staples to build the basis of a clean diet.

Nine Ways to Reduce Your Grocery Budget

1. Plan to shop every two weeks. Make room in your pantry (and your budget) to shop for enough food to last two weeks. The more often you see the inside of a store, the more likely you will give into temptation and deviate from your list.

2. Buy in-season produce. The simple laws of supply and demand tell us that things that are plentiful should be a little cheaper. Of course, the opposite is true if a particular produce item is not plentiful in your area, because it has to be shipped in from another part of the country (or world), and those increased costs to transport are passed along to you, the consumer.

3. Eat less. This one seems obvious, but to someone like me raised on three squares (big squares) a day, the idea of skipping a meal or two seems foreign. However, here lately I’ve been trying to eat only when hungry, not when the clock says 8:00, 12:00 and 6:00.

4. Grow your own vegetables. The last couple years we’ve experimented with square foot gardening. This year, we plan to expand on the idea and grow a variety of vegetables in garden boxes in our backyard. We also planted fruit trees last fall that will hopefully yield fresh fruits in the years to come.

5. Compare unit costs, not product packaging and creative pricing. Remember bigger isn’t always cheaper, and neither are the 10/$10 deals. I recently stocked up on a few items included in a 10/$10 sale and the next week the store returned the item to their normal price…$0.88.

6. Consider swapping beans or eggs for meats when looking for a protein source. Like any good carnivore, I like to build a meal around a good meat. Unfortunately, this can get expensive. Here lately, we’ve been enjoying eating “breakfast” for dinner – with scrambled eggs as the main course.  Beans also provide a nice source of protein and can augment a smaller amount of meat in dishes like tacos and chili to bulk up the recipe with out increasing the cost per meal.

7. Avoid the “junk food” aisle. Nothing good comes from this aisle. Soft drinks, chips, snack cakes, and cookies are simply empty calories. And they are expensive when you consider you can’t plan a meal around them. Your waistline won’t miss this aisle, either. Now, this is an area where I need to take my own advice!

8. Eat leftovers. One of the most effective ways to lower your cost per meal is to simply stretch your prepared foods across more meals. In fact, I have found that meals like spaghetti, soups, and meatloaf actually taste better the next night.

9. Freeze the extras. If you are short on freezer space, consider a second freezer to stock up on meats and vegetables when on sale, or to freeze leftovers of your favorite meals. My wife makes a huge batch of soup and freezes the portions we don’t eat the first two days for later consumption. Weeks later, on a particularly hectic day, we’ll toss the frozen soup in  a crock pot to thoroughly reheat and enjoy an easy meal.

These tips probably make sense in any environment, but are particularly important in the face of rising food costs, high unemployment and a time of high economic uncertainty. I highly recommend taking the time now to streamline your food budget and use some of the savings to build a pantry of stockpiled food.

Best case scenario, your pantry will provide cheaper food than is currently available in the store. Worst case scenario, your pantry will provide food if there isn’t any in the store. It’s my hope that we never face the latter scenario, but I’d rather be prepared just in case.

How are you dealing with increased food costs?

*This was the popular free Grand Slam breakfast at Dennys, but it represents one of my favorite, cheap meals to cook at home – breakfast!

Menu Planning

Better menu planning will result in cheaper meals. If you plan out your menu for a month, or just a week, then you will avoid an expensive grocery bill by reducing the number of trips you have to make to the store to pick up supplies.

Making a shopping list for all the ingredients you will need while planning your meals will also help save money.

Once you have your grocery list completed, make sure you go through your pantry, cabinets, refrigerator, or freezer to see if you already have some of the ingredients on the list. If you do, mark them off your grocery list. This step alone will save you from buying items you don’t need when you go shopping.

Consider using alternate sources of protein, such as beans, or Portobello mushrooms, for cheap meals, or make meals that will stretch the amount of meat used for a cheap meal plan. Look for a family pack of meat.

Family packs often help lower costs when you are coming up with cheap dinner ideas. One large family pack of chicken breasts can often stretch to make up to three different dinners.

Never Shop on an Empty Stomach

Before grocery shopping the best thing you can do is eat a little something at home. Few things cause us to spend more on groceries than shopping while hungry. When I’m hungry, everything looks good, and everything winds up in my shopping cart!

Buying generic items, particularly when shopping for canned goods, can save money. Generic items and store brands are generally just as good as the name brands.

Clip coupons for the items that you need, not for the junk food that you wouldn’t normally buy.

Fruits and Veggies

Knowing what fruits and vegetables are in season will help you fill out a cheap meal plan. When produce supplies are higher, the costs are generally a little lower, so the best deals can be found on in-season fruits and vegetables.

Buying your fruits, vegetables, and meats in bulk will save money, and may just help you come up with cheap dinner ideas. You can pair up items that you may have never thought to go together and come up with a new recipe.

Buying frozen fruits and vegetables can save you money on groceries, particularly for things that are not in season, and they are often just as nutritious as their fresh counterparts.

Now for the fun part. After the planning and shopping have been done, it is important that you remember to cook at home every night instead of eating out. My wife and I often have to resist the temptation to leave the grocery store and pick up something for dinner because we’re too wiped out from shopping to cook.

How to Learn How to Cook

Picking up a cookbook, or searching for recipes on the internet, is the simplest way of learning, and it can help you to come up with cheap dinner ideas, cheap meals, or cheap meal plans. I highly recommend picking up the book, How to Cook Without a Book, which is an excellent for learning to put together healthy, inexpensive meals with ingredients you have on hand.

If you are like me, and need a little extra instruction, I’d recommend taking a cooking class hosted at local community colleges or culinary schools. Even if you don’t plan to become a chef, an introduction to cooking can provide some excellent tips to take back to your own kitchen.

*This post was included in the Festival of Frugality #233

2010 is as good a year as any to get the finances back on track and start eating better for you. One food that has been around forever in many forms are beans. There are tons of types and almost all are like little pockets of low fat protein, perfect for your healthy eating plan. The other great news is that they are also extremely cheap, especially if purchased dried. I know the idea of preparing beans from dried may sound like hard work but it really is not.

Introducing Dried Beans Into Your Diet

Image Credit: CF Whitney

At this stage in 2010 a lot of us are looking at our sad excuse for a belly and sad excuse for a savings account and wondering what we are going to do about it! All of the infomercials, paid television endorsements and latest celebrity fad diet food will have us believing that eating well and staying healthy is a pricey affair. However this just is not the case.

In this article I am going to look at three common and nutritious dried beans and show you how you can easily prep them.

Firstly though, let’s take a look and see what beans can be used for:

• Stews, chillies and curries:beans can easily replace meat in a good hearty chilli or curry. I make these every few weeks and use almost no oil and a whole bunch of veggies.
• Dips:many beans can be blended with herbs, spices, tahini and other things to make really nice and nutritious dips.
• Burgers: bean burgers are pretty easy to make and can be grilled or lightly fried.
• Soups: Most soups can benefit from a few added beans

And much much more…..

You will get much better value buying all of these beans dried. If you have never looked at the dried beans and pulses section of your local supermarket then you may be very surprised at the prices and the amount of savings that could be had on many foods, if purchased dried. For example, in my experience, a bag of dried chickpeas containing the equivalent of around 2 or 3 cans will cost about the same as a single can.

Chickpeas

Image Credit: Phxpma

This is my favorite bean. I add them to soups, stews, chillies, curries, make hummus, burgers and even like them plain as a snack.

1/2cup (roughly 100g) will provide about 365 calories, 6g fat (only about 0.65g of that is saturated fat). You will also get around 19g of protein and 60.5g of carbs (17g of that is dietary fiber)…. Basically a very nutritious and hearty, healthy food.

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the chickpeas over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 24 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on medium heat.
7. Boil until beans are tender, 1-2 hours normally, so check periodically.

Black Eyed Peas

Image Credit: Frangrit

These are great added to rice or salads. They also make a great dip and are nutritionally comparable to meat for many dishes.

A 100g serving will provide about 243 calories, almost 0 fat, 62g carbs (27g of those are dietary fiber) and 24g of protein.

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the beans over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 6 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on low heat.
7. Boil until beans are tender, 40mins-1hr normally, check throughout.

White Beans

Image Credit: WontonBrutality

Quite a few Italian dishes call for white beans. They make excellent spreadable pastes, are great for pasta sauces and are good in stews, lasagnas, chillies and more. I also really like eating them cold as a snack, with a little salt and spice.

A 100g serving will provide approximately 335 calories, 0.9g fat, 60.8g carbs (15.5g dietary fiber) and 23.5g protein (there are various types of white beans so these numbers may vary slightly)

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the beans over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 12 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on low heat.
7. I have found boiling time to vary greatly for these beans, so ideally check every 1/2hr or so until they are just tender.

See, nothing to it! I hope this post inspires you to try and get a few more beans into your diet. Let us know how it goes.