Why You Should Stop Using Canned Beans

Considering cost per serving, and also that dried beans will weigh more when cooked than they do when they are dry, dried beans are definitely less expensive. In fact, canned beans are 3 times more expensive than dried beans. If you are on a budget and counting pennies, homemade beans are the way to go. It takes a little more time and effort to cook homemade beans, but the effect on the budget will be worth it. A serving of dried beans cost about 10 cents. Quite an affordable way to feed a family some of the most nutritious food on the planet!

Health-wise, canned beans are not as healthy as homemade beans, containing 100 times more sodium. If you are watching your blood pressure or just trying to keep the family's food as healthy as possible, you're going to want to avoid canned beans due to it's higher salt content.

Canned beans tend to have that tinny taste from the can. Not quite as good as the actually wholesome taste of homemade beans in which you control the taste with your own seasoning and style. Also, the beans in the can are packed in some kind of goop. There might be some nutrition there in that sauce, but the naturally occurring sauce in the pot is much better.

BPA is used to make plastic. It's used in sporting equipment, compact disks, baby bottles and, yes, in the lining of cans of beans on the supermarket shelf. This synthetic material seeps into the beans in the can, infecting it with its dangerous properties.

BPA is known to interfere with the normal functioning of hormones in your body because it copies estrogen. It can create an imbalance of hormones in your endocrine system, block normally operating hormones and increasing others. BPA is known to have detrimental effects on the brain, on child development and can create behavioral problems.

Having said that, some companies promote their canned beans as not containing BPA. However, you have to read the labels, and to be safe you might want to switch to dried beans.

So, we've seen that dried beans are healthier because you can control the salt it contains, as opposed to canned beans which contain up to 100 times more sodium. Dried beans tastes better, they don't have that tinny taste of canned beans and also don't have the slimy goop of the stuff in a can, but, rather, the naturally occurring sauce from being cooked in a pot. Dried beans are cheaper, they cost 3 times less than their canned counterpart. In addition, and most importantly, homemade beans that you take the time and effort to cook in a pot, do not contain BPA, a poisonous agent found in plastics and in the lining of the cans that beans come in, that is known to disrupt your hormonal balance and cause developmental, brain and behavioral problems.

Simply put, dried beans are healthier, safer, tastier and cheaper.