Uh-oh. Apparently we're not getting enough dry beans in our diets. The latest issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that only 7.9 percent of adults consume dry beans, peas and lentils on any given day.
Learn all about the bean in our true/false nutrition quiz:
1. A half-cup of dry beans contains as much protein as a 1-ounce serving of lean meat.
2. Of the 116 calories in a half-cup of dry beans, 22 come from fat.
3. Dry beans and canned beans contain the same amount of simple sugars (sucrose).
4. Dry beans are a poor source of methionine, an amino acid essential to nutrition.
5. The three things to look for when selecting dry beans are uniform color, uniform size and lack of defects such as pinholes in seed coats.
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ANSWERS: 1: true (7 grams); 2: false (0 fat); 3: false (canned, 4 percent; dry, less than 1 percent); 4: true; 5: true.
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Sources: Journal of the American Dietetic Association; USDA; Utah State University; Idaho Bean Commission
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(c) 2009, The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.). Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.