How Can We Learn (or Relearn) a Love of Beans and Peas?
Why bother with beans?
There are so many reasons to eat more beans, peas and pulses. As nitrogen-fixing plants, legumes naturally improve soil fertility when used in crop rotations (reducing the need for polluting fossil fuel fertilisers). Meanwhile, beans provide a cheap alternative protein source to meat and are packed with fibre and nutrients.
This year, the Food Foundation, Veg Power and Beans is How joined forces to double UK bean consumption by 2028. Beans are healthy, affordable and better for the planet.
But knowing you should eat something and actually wanting to eat it are two different things. People only get the health benefits of beans if they find them delicious.
The History of Beans in the U.K. and Beyond
When we talk of beans as if they were an unpopular food or something difficult to love, it’s worth remembering that humans have been enjoying beans for thousands of years. Since the earliest days of agriculture, beans have sustained entire populations. First domesticated around 15,000 years ago, different varieties emerged in different regions: fava beans, lentils and chickpeas in the Fertile Crescent; soybeans and adzuki beans in China; common beans in Mesoamerica; and cowpeas in sub-Saharan Africa [1]. Today, these legumes remain a major part of diets worldwide.
Since well before ancient Roman times beans and peas have been part of the British diet. Their ability to be dried and stored made them an essential to diets in leaner months. They also played an important role in traditional crop rotation farming, with field beans widely grown. A traditional peasant food, beans and peas were simmered into soups and stews that formed the backbone of everyday meals.
Later ancestors of these peasant dishes do survive, especially in the North of England. Pease pottage, a yellow split pea stew popular from the Middle Ages, later evolved into pease pudding [2]. Parched peas, once a Bonfire Night staple, are carlin peas served with butter and vinegar. Mushy peas are made from soaked, boiled and mashed marrowfat peas. However, many of these hearty dishes have faded from everyday menus and now live mostly in memory.
Beans never disappeared entirely, of course: baked beans remain a staple. Yet the beans in a tin are imported haricot beans, typically grown in North America and produced by a multinational food company, far removed from traditional British field beans.
Out of fashion
Like many traditional foods, most of the older British bean dishes have fallen out of favour. They were filling, affordable and widely available, but they also required time: soaking, simmering and stewing. Meanwhile, foods once reserved for the wealthy became cheaper and more accessible.
Fresh garden peas show this change clearly. Once mostly available to people with gardens, they were seen as delicate and desirable, even prompting cooks to disguise asparagus as peas (see Bee’s blog). With the arrival of frozen peas, however, they became available to everyone year-round. The same pattern applied to other former luxury foods, such as white bread, sugar and pineapples.
British farmers still grow them, but many beans, especially fava beans (our main bean crop), are exported or used as animal feed rather than eaten here.
What goes down, must go up
Like many traditional foods, most of the older British bean dishes have fallen out of favour. They were filling, affordable and widely available, but they also required time: soaking, simmering and stewing. Meanwhile, foods once reserved for the wealthy became cheaper and more accessible.
Fresh garden peas show this change clearly. Once mostly available to people with gardens, they were seen as delicate and desirable, even prompting cooks to disguise asparagus as peas (see Bee’s blog). With the arrival of frozen peas, however, they became available to everyone year-round. The same pattern applied to other former luxury foods, such as white bread, sugar and pineapples.
British farmers still grow them, but many beans, especially fava beans (our main bean crop), are exported or used as animal feed rather than eaten here.
It’s also worth remembering that even as traditional British bean dishes have fallen out of favour, others have arrived to take their place. While pulse consumption overall remains low in the U.K., our consumption of chickpeas has actually doubled (from 2008 to 2018), helped by the popularity of hummus and the rise of vegan diets.[3] Meanwhile, when it comes to lentils, the U.K. is actually one of the top importers of lentils in Europe, partly because of its large South Asian communities.[4]
British communities around the country may be eating less pease pudding than our grandparents did; but they are eating more dal and chickpea curries. What’s more, many home cooks are discovering that despite their reputation for being slow to cook, split lentils for dal can actually be simmered very fast. British-Indian food writer Meera Sodha’s dal recipe cooks the lentils in just 10-15 minutes, making it no more time consuming than cooking pasta. The delicious spices and seasonings in a dal make it very easy to love.
The joy of peas and beans!
At TastEd, we agree: if children are to enjoy new foods, they need to be introduced as if they are something delicious (which is not hard with peas and beans, because they are).
Children are most likely to enjoy any new food if they can build familiarity and discover how exciting and delicious it is!
We help children explore fresh fruit and vegetables in a low-pressure environment using all five senses, and many are ready to taste by the end. The same is true with peas and beans.
With the upcoming changes to school meal standards, we look set to be having more beans on plates – so we need to make sure they don’t end up in the bin. Last year, with funding from Beans is How, we developed a new set of resources to introduce children to the varied world of beans. These resources had a brand new set of illustrations from our artist Annabel Lee and the content was created by food writer Bee Wilson, with additional materials from TastEd trustee Flora Donovan, who created some great similes and metaphors for the sight and feel of chickpeas, lentils and beans.
‘I tried something new. It tastes really buttery if you mush it up’ wrote one child at Washingborough Academy after trying butter beans for the first time.
Food trends move in cycles. By introducing children to beans early, we can help return this valuable, sustainable food to everyday life. Even if they don’t love eating mushy peas, we can draw on bean dishes from around the world to show just how versatile and delicious beans can be.
Read more about the TastEd beans project.
References:
[1] Bohra A et al. The Key to the Future Lies in the Past: Insights from Grain Legume Domestication and Improvement Should Inform Future Breeding Strategies. Plant Cell Physiol. 2022 Nov 22;63(11):1554–1572.
[2] Vogler, P. (2020). Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain. United Kingdom: Atlantic Books.
[3] Kutepova I, Rehm CD, Friend SJ. UK Chickpea Consumption Doubled from 2008/09-2018/19. Nutrients. 2023 Nov 15;15(22):4784
[4] CBI: The European market’s potential for dried lentils: https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/grains-pulses-oilseeds/dried-lentils/market-potential
Recipes:
Hodmedod’s traditional mushy peas
Further reading/listening:
Bee Wilson’s blog: A Dish of Asparagus and Peas for Spring
The Food Foundation’s Pod Bites: Can beans transform school food?
