"Just add beans, pulses and lentils"

[Hagrod]

I am sick of hearing this advice given when food poverty is being discussed!

"Just add beans, pulses and lentils to all your meals, they will give you the protein you need to spread expensive meat and fish further [ad infinitum]."

Like many other people, I do not have packets of beans, pulses and lentils nestled at the back of my cupboards just waiting for the day I am so starving I need to add them to a bowl of soup. I would have to go out and buy them, I assume they are not given away for free.

I just think it's such a cliched piece of advice that has been meted out to 'the peasants' for decades now and I wish they'd stop it.

@antelopevalley - i don’t add lettuce, but basically. Chickpeas, with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice, then whatever I have in fridge.
Cucumber, courgette, tomatoes, avocado, herbs, spring onions, red onions, peppers, olives, feta etc.
Its also nice with roasted veg leftover if you roast extra the night before for another dish.

just look up ‘chickpea salad’ for ideas

I really hate it when people who clearly haven't experienced food poverty try and dictate what is and isn't good advice. It's just as patronising as being told to get beans pulses and lentils!

Perhaps food banks need to dish out recipe booklets of easy, low fuel usage, hob top meals to go with their food they hand out seeing as many people are saying a barrier to this advice is knowing what to cook? Maybe encourage food banks to ask for herbs and spices as well?

Can you blend them? I can’t stand the texture and was thinking I could blend them in with a sauce?

Isn’t this a bit, “Let them eat cake”. It isn’t about lentils it is that theIr will be families trying to choose, between, heating, eating, buying nappies, paying for prescriptions no amount of lentil padding is going to help with that

If I added them to a meal, no-one in my house would eat them. I don’t blame them either. I could just about manage red lentils but nothing else.

Or just eat cake.
I fail to see the problem.

If It's about learning to like a food you dislike or going hungry, well, I'll let you decide.

Fwiw I despise lentils, it's the texture for me, but when you're broke you improvise

This is the only solution 😂

She's also talking hypothetically presumably as she has other threads about her Sainsbury's delivery and not buying smoked haddock any more.
All she's complaining about is that IF she were poor, she'd have no lentils in the cupboard because she's not bought any. No shit Sherlock. It's not like you can go "expecto lenticchium" and they suddenly appear.

Lentils don’t need soaking

Food poverty isn’t just those using food banks with no access to a cooker though? Definition seems to be struggling to access sufficient quantities of food and/or sufficiently nutritional food.
So ‘add lentils’ firmly meets that brief as it bulks food out and adds protein.
Suggestions may help someone struggling but not in absolute dire straits. They are helpful to me as someone who wants to cut meat consumption and eat more healthily.

I like bean dishes on occasion but I agree with you. The masses are supposed to subsist on whatever is cheapest while the people lecturing us probably have steak. Now they’re telling us we’d better eat bugs and like it. Cheaper (of course), better for this that and the other. They always shroud their agendas in noble sounding phrases. And tasty! I don’t think so.

It's not like you can go "expecto lenticchium" and they suddenly appear.

I wish you could. We should've evolved that ability by now.

You may not like it on account of the person giving it but it is still good advice for fuel economy and always has been, whether you want to save money or carbon cycles. Perhaps you care about neither.

Perhaps you think fuel management tips shouldn't be shared with people? Are you Liz Truss?

Aye, but I'd have gone for Lindor and gin myself.

Haha, or a big fuckoff cake. Sometimes lentil dhal just hits the spot though!

Store cupboard basics are for people not living hand to mouth

The point is that everyone already knows this. Poor people aren't stupid. Obviously we are already wearing jumpers.

It's old but sensible advice.

Growing up our meat was often cooked down with potato and carrot. I'm thinking this will be particularly useful if I need to start using less meat.

Why is it that when any advice is given on MN about food, money management etc there are posters who come along to insist that because the advice isn’t applicable to the absolute poorest in society then it’s just not good advice at all?

Exactly. Personally I find these recipe suggestions very helpful and I'm sure many others do too. Most of us are trying to save money where we can, and by adding more (cheap) pulses to our meals, then that's good advice for the majority of people.

I’ve started cooking with lentils and chickpeas. Two of us will eat them and two won’t. I give the two that won’t eat them most of the meat and we have the chickpeas etc.

its reduced my shopping bill a bit plus it’s a little bit healthier

They’re really cheap to buy though, and packets of dried lentils and beans keep for ages in the cupboard. Dried are nicer than tinned and much cheaper.

Can you blend them? I can’t stand the texture and was thinking I could blend them in with a sauce?

Yes, chickpeas can be blended to make hummus, butter beans to make mash and most other beans can probably be blended too.

They are pretty much the basis of my diet as I don't eat meat.

These 'how to deal with cost of living crisis' threads, are like the baking of banana bread during lockdown, where we all pretend this is okay and manageable and that we weren't living in fear of our lives!