Beans

beans beans the musical fruit; the more you eat, the more you toot!    So says my grandfather, I hear tell.   I surmise it was a nice way of saying that beans can give you gas.    ..make you fart a lot,  LOL

Beans and rice has long been thought of as the perfect pair-- a complete protein.  Actually. nutritionists see that beans are more expensive and people are eating more rode than beans,   Eating more beans they say, can reduce the chance of diabetes and heart disease.   But, the kicker for most vegetarians, is that they aren't in total the best source of protein,  you need to eat meat too.    Brown rice is better than white.

If you are vegetarian, you need to be mindful of your iron and vitamin b12 levels on your blood.    Lack of vitamin B12 can be very serious.  If you are vegan, double the concern.  

Beans that are not cooked well can make you sick, albeit short lived, not pleasant.  Beans shouldn't be left out of the fridge more than two hours.   They should be eaten or tossed after two days.    They do not freeze well; the freezing changes the texture.  

All this makes me believe that they are not worth cooking from scratch unless you cook a small amount and eat it that day or the next.   For a small family it hardly seems worth while.  

Canned beans are inexpensive on sale.   You can and should rinse them and throw out the water that they are packed in.   This reduces the salt.  Some are concerned about BPA.  The FDA says it is harmless in the dices we get as humans.  

For everything that exists in the food industry, there is someone that can dream up a reason why it's bad for you.    If you took all of those items off your table you wouldn't die  from the cancer, heart disease or other toted diseases, you would die  from mal- nutrition.   I thinI one has to use some common sense.   Moderation is the key.

Remember when butter  and eggs were terrible!    Seems that eggs are supposed to be eaten even daily, and, butter in moderation is better than the fake alternative.   The fake alternative has palm oil in it and other vegetable oils that they are saying are processed with metals.   Did you know that if you eat too much kale, you can get lead poisoning.    I could go on and on, but you get the drift.
Everything has its good and bad.

I read an article about what we shouldn't be eating.   Some of it  isn't in  our diet anyway,   I tend to buy only are items with food value in them.   Potato chips and soda are not it!   I use some sugar free, but use it sparingly.    The article says that you can't cut all of out, there would be nothing left to eat.

Salad dressing is a culprit.    I guess when ours is eaten, we will use an oil and vinegar with olive oil and make our own ranch and blue cheese.   You can get mayo that has olive oil in it.  It was the same price as regular.     It doesn't cut all of the salad oil, but it cuts down on it.

Baked deserts are also a culprit.   That's easy to reduce or cut out of your diet.   I've already done that except for occasional special occasions.

Again, I think that moderation is the key.   There has to be other factors in these foods making you get a particular disease, or all of us would have all of those diseases.

We do know for sure that our bodies need a certain amount of salt, sugar / carbs and fat.   We eat far too much in America.  There are easy ways to reduce our intakes.

Ps  I did see. Ore research on that article.    There is no BPA in canned beans.  There is salt and it can. E greatly reduced by rinsing the beans.

Lay off the salty snacks. Rinse anything that is canned.   Make a substitute for cream base that has low sodium and fat free ingredients.   Steer clear of baked goods and eat fresh fruits on season instead, or yogurt.

For those that have Pinterest, the article I am feeling to is on it.

http://dontwastethecrumbs.com/2016/01/top-5-ingredients-to-avoid-in-food
disclaimer -  Many of the products that they say are bad do not have those ingredients in there. I think you have to read your labels.

Thanks, Jane