This is just a PSA that I discovered about beans. Or, maybe I'm the only one that didn't know...
Briefly, I've been on a pretty amazing diet over the past month and have been slowly losing weight. I've held to the diet extremely well, and was surprised at how little I was losing on a pure CICO basis. I reanalyzed all my inputs and found that I have been drastically undercounting the calories in beans and lentils.
I believe that bean/lentil packaging is as misleadingly designed as microwave popcorn. After all my research, I'm finding that (1) most beans and lentils are 600-800 calories per cup DRY, (2) that beans and lentils increase 2-3x in volume when cooked, losing very little (<5%) of their calories if you ditch the water. And (3) most labels are for cooked beans.
I have beans and lentils that are labeled anywhere from 60-80 calories per 1/4 cup, and they include the word DRY. However, what led to this research is I have two bags of lentils. One says 70 calories per 1/4 cup dry, and the other says 180 calories per 1/4 cup dry. Seems like a pretty dramatic difference given that, gram-wise, they both weigh within 10% of each other.
I'm not sure if companies have some weird interpretation of the word DRY, but 180 divided by 70 is 2.57, which is right in the sweet spot of the difference you would expect from the increase in the water volume in moving from dry to cooked.
So, in my meal plan, I've been meaning to eat 1-cup of cooked beans, or about 250 calories. Instead, I've been eating 1-cup of dry beans (cooked) which is 750 calories. That's about a pound per week of hidden calories and WAY TOO MUCH FIBER!!! :)
TLDR: Be careful with the packaging on beans and lentils. If you are measuring them out dry, they are 600-800 calories per cup, but most calory counts are based on a misleadingly-labeled-cooked volume which increases the beans/lentils 2-3x in size. (1 cup cooked beans or lentils = 1/3 to 1/2 dry beans or lentils).
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2WLMvXe
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