Question about Beans, and a Question about sugar & labels.

[Southern_Charm]

Ok , I just made a suprisingly great tasting soup today. It was sorta experimental and turned out great. Its cold here the last couple of weekends and Ive been wanting or craving chilli or a good hot and harty meal.
I found this large jar of precooked mixed beans at our local grocery store. I thought they might work well in a soup. So, I dumped em in a crock pot, cooked up some stew beef cubes, dumped those in and used a large can of tomato juice for my "soup" and I seasoned it with black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and parsley flakes and it was quite good. Could always subsitute the beef cubes for chicken or ground chicken or turkey and make it more "chilli" like.

But this brand of jarred pre cooked beans were a "Randall" brand and they were bought at a IGA store. ( if anyone wanted to make a quick and easy bean and beef soup).

*Note, this bean mixture did have various beans and it had green peas. so this should be a p2 soup. We started P2 just today actually. So, I think we're ok with having the peas in it.*

But my two questions, in this jar of beans there were a couple of beans on the ingrediant list label that werent on any of the lists..... they were, "pink beans" and " small red beans" neither of these were on the good or bad lists..... I just figured a bean is a bean and they'd be ok. But we got to thinking....... are they? and checked our lists and saw none of these.


Second question, Im unsure about how to read the labels as far as the "sugars" go. I know to avoid things that have all the "syrups, and "toses" lol for lack of better word. I do know to look for those but sometimes in the ingrediants list it will have sugar, but on the nutrition facst label it will say "zero" sugars. So, in this case what exaclty does that mean? Pardon, my ignorance. But I was thinking that maybe that was just "natural sugar" in the beans. We've done well in our P1, but af far as labels go, still unsure about the suggar thing. Obviously I dont buy sauces or flavors or items that are in syrups or that have those key words in it Or that even have sugar in the top three ingrediants. But, just get confused when "sugar" is in the mid to bottom of the list, yet says zero on the Nutrition facts... I always wonder, Is it safe or not? lol

THanks guys! It was a great soup if you are looking for a super easy, dump it all in a crock pot and add seasoning kind of thing.

[Kimboroni]

I moved this topic to the p2 section, since you're on p2 now and some of it pertains to a p2 food item (green peas).

All beans are fine, and beans can have different names anyway, so you should be good there. And the green peas are okay like you thought.

If there is no sugar listed on the ingredient list, but sugar is on the nutrition facts, then, yes, it's from the natural sugar in the food item. You'll find this with things like tomatoes and milk. I don't think beans have much natural sugar, though. It shouldn't be much more than 1g. Check carefully-- one non -ose or syrup sugar I can think of right now is evaporated cane juice.

As for showing sugar in the ingredient list, but far down the list, and showing 0g of sugar, that means the total sugar was low enough that they could round down to 0. That's fine.

Sugar isn't bad. You just have to keep an eye on the source by reading the ingredient list. And even some natural sugars will be high glycemic when removed from their proper source and consumed in too high of a quantity, such as drinking fruit juice-- too much sugar at once with no fiber.

[Southern_Charm]

Thank you!

That was helpful, thats what I was thinking but its great to have validation. We've done well but I sometimes feel like I dont "quite" understand how all the carbs sugars etc work and labels etc. Ive seemed to choose the right things but sometimes when you are standing in the grocery store reading labels you begin to question yourself.

Im very greatful for this message board. I believe that we wouldnt have done as well if we didnt have this place to ask these questions.. Thank u guys for your time in answering what is probably endless questions of the same ol stuff. lol


Im gonna go post this recipe now because it was soo simple, just easy open it up and toss in a crock pot with a few seasonings and was great! I used tomatoe juice. We bought some whoe grain pasta today to try on our p1 and we looked at the spagettie sauces and they seemed to high in the sugars so we went for some of the tomato pastes that were less. So, Im thinknig to season that, like I did the juice tonight w the same seasonings will make for a great sauce verses the full on spagetti sauce with the sugars.

Thanks again!

[Kimboroni]

It's my understanding that there are quite a few major brand pasta sauces that don't add sugar. I just looked at some of the Classico ones that qualify, and they had 5g of sugar-- remember that's from the tomatoes, which is fine.

[Magna]

Even within one brand, there may be some sauces that are fine, and some that aren't. For example, the Barilla tomato & basil is fine, but most other Barilla varieties aren't.

A little added sugar is usually OK, especially later in phase 2. My own rule of thumb is that for tomato-based pasta sauces, sugar (including sugar under any other name, like cane juice or corn syrup) is OK if it comes after all the significant ingredients. If there's more oil, salt, or spices than sugar, I think it should be fine.

[Jaylah]

...sometimes when you are standing in the grocery store reading labels you begin to question yourself.

Charmie, I was laughing at myself when I read that part. I'll have to tell you about a really stupid mistake I made a few weeks ago.

I don't have high blood pressure, but I've also been trying to pay more attention to my sodium intake lately.

I like to keep chicken, beef and vegetable bouillon/soup base in my pantry. As I've said, I'm culinarily challenged, and don't really like cooking, so I find those come in very handy. I can broil half a chicken breast and, while that's cooking, toss some veggies and a little baggie of (pre-cooked) beans from the freezer in a pot with some "stock." When the chicken is done, I cut it into bit sized pieces, toss it into the pot with the veggies and beans, and have a fast and easy, yet healthy, soup. I know the stores have "stock" in cartons, but the problem with those is that -- once opened -- they usually spoil before I've used them up. So the dried or paste versions work better for me. But so many of those are essentially just glorified salt-water.

So I was standing in the grocery store aisle, looking at the array of bouillons and soup-bases. And my eye was drawn to a package of "Herb Ox Sodium Free Chicken Bouillon." Well, now, that was just what I was looking for, right????

When I got it home, I actually looked closely at the ingredients label. And nowhere on the entire list was the word "chicken." What was there was: Sugar, Potassium Chloride, Onion Powder, Maltodextrin, Monoammonium Glutamate, Gelatin, Dextrose, Turmeric Color, Dehydrated Parsley, Flavoring, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking Agent).

It never even made it into the cupboard. It went right from my hand into the kitchen garbage.