I am lazy. Some of you may think I'm not because I cook my meals fresh 6 or 7 days a week, but when it comes to long, drawn out processes like soaking and cooking dried beans. I'm LAZY. Plus I prefer the mushier texture of canned beans when I'm making things like refried beans.

Last night I made tostadas with "refried" beans, turkey sausage, salsa and cheese. I used a can of regular dark red kidney beans, and drained and rinsed them. As I was rinsing them, I was thinking about how much of the sodium I was rinsing away. Canned beans generally are high in sodium unless you can find reduced sodium ones, so I knew between the beans, cheese and sausage this was going to be a high sodium meal.

I did a little search this morning, and apparently draining and rinsing your canned beans can reduce sodium by 41%!

"Recently, at the Institute of Food Technologists Conference, Joshua B. Jones and John R. Mount, both from the department of food science and technology at the University of Tennessee, presented “Sodium Reduction in Canned Bean Varieties by Draining and Rinsing.” Jones and Mount showed that draining and rinsing are effective ways to reduce the sodium content of canned beans. Overall, the draining treatment alone reduced sodium by 36% while the draining-rinsing treatment reduced sodium by 41%. Rinsing beans after they are drained ensures that all residual sodium adhering to the bean’s surface is removed and results in the highest reduction. All brands and all classes of beans tested demonstrated significant reductions in sodium by either draining or draining and rinsing."

www.todaysdietitian.com/
newarchives/011110p62.shtml

That's awesome news! Unfortunately my tracker won't be correct, but I'll know in the back of my mind that I didn't go over sodium when I ate my recipe. Reducing the sodium in the beans by 157 mg, which is good, because they're DELICIOUS. Here's the recipe:

recipes.sparkpeople.com/
recipe-detail.asp?recipe=2
384930

Om nom nom!