by Lorie Reilly in Consumer Money Saving, Public Health & Safety
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Last Modified on October 4, 2010 at 7:17 pm
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Are you making efforts to trim your budget? Your waistline? Your cholesterol count? If so, you may be getting more intimate with the aisle in the supermarket where one finds neatly stacked bags of beautifully colored dried beans and legumes. These lovely nuggets, also known as pulses, are the seeds harvested from the pods of their respective plants. Provided that they are eaten with grain, their protein content is quite comparable to that of meat, and their cost is significantly lower for you at the register and for all of us in terms of the resources they require to produce.
In a quest to find the cheapest source of protein in Somerville, I’ve discovered the lowest bean and legume prices so far at Seabra Foods, 624 Somerville Avenue. In the front of the store where they stack huge pyramids of staples such as rice, oil, and dried beans, you’ll find the following:
- Split Peas: $.79/pound
- Lentils: $.89/pound
- Red Kidney: $.99/pound
Can you find a cheaper source of protein in our city?
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While I support encouraging people to eat more plants, did you have to include the bit relating to the myth of the “complete protein”? That was started by an author who didn’t know what they were talking about (and later recanted), but apparently some people just can’t let go.
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SomerVeg, in what way did Lorie reference the myth you mention?
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Check out the discussion in the Wikipedia article “protein combining”. Lorie is correct here: no one should assume that most single plant foods provide all necessary amino acids.
The USDA states the consensus view of US nutritionists:
Protein has many important functions in the body and is essential for growth and maintenance. Protein needs can easily be met by eating a variety of plant-based foods. Combining different protein sources in the same meal is not necessary. Sources of protein for vegetarians include beans, nuts, nut butters, peas, and soy products (tofu, tempeh, veggie burgers). Milk products and eggs are also good protein sources for lacto-ovo vegetarians.
http://www.mypyramid.gov/tips_resources/vegetarian_diets.html
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If you want to enjoy dried beans without excessive intestinal gas, add a bit of baking soda to the initial presoak/pre-boil water, then dump it out, rinse the beans, and cook in fresh water.
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I recently bought some cider for a meeting, at Star, for something like $4.80, and, a few days later, for myself at Market Basket for about 25% less. I wonder if others might be interested in creating a price chart and contributing deals we encounter in local stores every week. I’m regularly astonished at Star and Stop & Shop prices compared to average (non-special) prices at Market Basket, but the rapid growth of little, more specialized stores like Seabra is a remarkable resource to us, as residents of a uniquely diverse city. They’re not all yuppie shops, and even the yuppier ones have deals from time to time.
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