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What a whirlwind the past few weeks, (maybe even the past few months) have been. Now that the holidays are over, all you want to do is sit down in your favorite chair, put your feet and relax.
If you find yourself starting the New Year a little low on energy (and cash) eating more beans will help you save both. What could be better on a cold day than an easy hearty, healthy meal made with beans? Beans are an inexpensive way to restock your supply of vitamins and minerals, while helping you keep to your New Year’s resolution to eat less fat and more fiber. Dry beans and other legumes are some of the most widely available, affordable and nutritionally complete staple, and no matter how low the mercury drops, dried and canned beans are a real comfort food.
Nutritious: Beans supply important nutrients your body needs. Beans offer complex carbohydrates, protein, important vitamins and minerals, and fiber in every low-fat, cholesterol-free bite. Now that’s power-packed nutrition!
Affordable: A bag of dry beans, once cooked, provides healthful food for many meals and costs less per serving than many other sources of protein.
Convenient and Versatile: Easily cooked, beans can serve as a main meal or a side dish, or they can be added to other foods, such as soups and salads, to increase nutritional value and to add flavor and texture.
Tips for Adding More Beans to Your Diet:
Health experts recommend that you eat at least 3 cups of beans each week. Eating more beans is easier than you may think. Follow these tips for adding more beans to your daily diet:
• Keep beans in your pantry. If you don’t have time to cook packaged, dry beans, use canned beans instead.
• Use beans instead of, or in addition to, meat in your main dish, or in soups, salads, stuffings, and rice and pasta dishes.
• Top salads with beans.
• Mix beans with rice.
• Stir beans into your favorite pasta sauce.
• Fill a tortilla or a flatbread with beans and other ingredients like rice, meat, low fat cheese, vegetables.
• Use convenient, prepared bean spreads, or make your own by mashing cooked beans and adding spices for healthful, low-fat, high-fiber dips and spreads.
• Use chopped or mashed beans in brownie and cookie recipes, replacing part of the fat ingredient with beans to add protein, fiber, texture and flavor while lowering fat, cholesterol and calories.