Dried Great Northern beans and you!

When ever the mood strikes me, I like to make up a pot-o-beans! I generally use Great Northern beans for a number of reasons; I like the taste and they are inexpensive! But not only does a pot of beans satisfy a hearty appetite, they are actually quite nutritious too! Just a quarter cup of these beans will supply the average person with high levels of protein, half their daily requirement for fiber all at only about 70 calories per serving. And, because they digest slowly, the glycemic load on your blood is very low! Oh, and yes, please make sure you use dried beans out of a bag rather than using the canned varieties. Here's a few reasons why that's a good idea:

• Lower sodium: Dry beans, purchased in bags, contain no sodium. By contrast, canned beans are quite high in sodium (1/2 cup of canned beans contain about 20% of your daily sodium requirement). If you're watching your sodium intake level for blood pressure concerns or other health reasons, stick with dry beans.
• More natural: Canned beans can last several years in their cooked state, thus, they have added preservatives. By contrast, when you use dry beans that you cook yourself, you can know exactly what ingredients you've added and how the beans have been prepared. Dry beans are purchased and cooked in a more natural and controlled state.
• Bisphenol A (BPA): This is a chemical found in the plastic white lining of most cans of food. It has become controversial lately because studies have shown that it may mimic the hormone estrogen and may contribute to certain cancers, insulin resistance and birth defects. If you would like to avoid this exposure, stick with dry beans.
  

Posing a contrary view and according to Dr. Loren Cordain, founder of the Paleo Diet movement, beans and even all legumes are actually not all that good for you! An article published by him 'Beans and Legumes: Are they Paleo?' goes into some great detail as to why he feels they should be stricken from human consumption all together! As far as I'm personally concerned, the question is still open.

My Great Northern Bean Experiment

Way earlier this season, I think it was sometime around February, I was eating a plate of beans when a thought struck me. I got to wondering about how these beans, which I buy by the bagful at the store, were grown. I wondered if Great Northern Beans were a bush bean or pole bean (for that matter are they a hybrid?). I wondered if I could eat them when the pods were young. Finally, I wondered about how productive such a plant would be. That is to say, how many dried beans could be harvested from an average mature plant and what other factors might inhibit or enhance said production So, that thought turned into an experiment of sorts for me to try this spring and summer.

Along about the middle of April, I planted 25 beans in a small two by two foot area in a raised bed I have out back. I was surprised when after just a few days, most of the beans germinated. In just two short months they went from small to mature and my first two questions were therefore answered. Beans fresh out of the bag do readily germinate and the resulting plant is of the bush variety. By mid June, Each plant was sporting approximately twenty five bean pods with about six little beans in each pod or about 150 dried beans per plant.

I harvested a few of these to cook up in boiling water after first de-stringing them and then cutting them up into small pieces. Once done, I added a little butter and some salt and pepper. They tasted marvelous. So question number three was answered in the affirmative.

Now, I have to wait for the remaining pods to fully mature after which I will carefully harvest the plants to get an idea of the average number of dried bans that can be had per plant. From this data, I can come up with some idea of how many would need to be planted to support a person if that was all they had to eat. I’ll also get an idea of how many new beans a single bean produces. I’ll write about that in a future blog and also plan to have a You Tube Video on this on the Danomanno Channel.