picture from Freepik
by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD
There’s no query – meals prices are going up. Each time I’m going to the grocery retailer, my complete appears to be increased than the week earlier than. Regardless of value will increase, black beans, lentils, pinto beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, and different beans are nonetheless a comparatively low-cost supply of protein, iron, and different vitamins. Many articles on decreasing meals prices name for cooking dried beans from scratch. Is that basically a decrease value choice in comparison with canned beans?
With the assistance of a number of interns and volunteers, we decided the worth of 14-15.5-ounce cans of a number of sorts of legumes (beans/peas/lentils) and the worth of a 1-pound bag of dried legumes. We regarded for the bottom value merchandise, which had been normally retailer manufacturers. We didn’t use sale costs. We checked costs at main supermarkets in Maryland, New Jersey, Texas, Alabama, and California in June and July 2025. On common, a ½ cup of legumes cooked from dry value about 40% lower than a ½ cup of canned beans. In actual numbers, this was a distinction of between 16 and 30 cents much less per ½ cup serving. Not a fortune, however, when you’re consuming beans day by day, value financial savings may very well be important over a month.
| Common value per ½ cup of canned legumes | Common value per ½ cup of legumes, cooked from dry | |
| Black beans | .33 | .15 |
| Black-eyed peas | .36 | .17 |
| Chickpeas | .32 | .14 |
| Kidney beans | .32 | .16 |
| Lentils | .45 | .15 |
I’m not saying that it’s important to begin cooking dried beans. There are prices by way of time and vitality use that weren’t factored into the prices I discussed. It’s handy to open a can of chickpeas and shortly make hummus or to make use of canned beans for chili and to not have to recollect to soak and prepare dinner dried beans forward of time. That comfort could also be value the additional value. Alternatively, when you prepare dinner a giant batch of plain dried beans, they are often portioned into containers and frozen, able to be thawed if you want the equal of a can of beans. A 14-15.5-ounce can of beans has about 1-3/4 cups of beans, after draining off the canning liquid.
In any case, consuming beans usually can provide well being advantages and assist to scale back meals prices.
Thanks to Chaltu Watkins, Ellie Meyerstein, Neha Vivek, and Aileen Zhang for his or her work on this undertaking.
To examine beans see:
What are Beans, Legumes and Pulses?
Fast Concepts for Utilizing Canned Beans or Leftover Cooked Beans
Utilizing the Ol’ Bean and plenty of extra recipe concepts on our web site
