Lire & STYLE. Have a fitness tip or recipe to share? Contact the editor at lifeandstyle@theotherpress.ca Dont be mean, eat your beans! Beans offer more than you can imagine Aidan Mouellic Staff Writer Ba have a bad rap. They are perhaps the most stigmatized food item out there, aside from durian. But why do beans have an image problem? Is it because beans are the main staple for homeless, babbling goofballs in films, or is it because beans apparently cause horrible gas once consumed? It doesn’t matter; all that does is that beans are the most overlooked food staple out there, despite being food royalty. For starters, beans—which are members of the legume family—are inexpensive. At Galloway’s Specialty Foods in New Westminster you can get 500 grams of dry bagged beans for about $4. Aside from the economic aspect of bean consumption, the food staple is extremely nutrient dense. Beans are high in protein, high in fibre, and chock- full of antioxidants, which help prevent heart disease, cancer, and signs of ageing. Part of the negative portrayal of beans in the media originates from the link between beans and flatulence. Beans can cause farting in people due to the tough fibre within the beans, which our bodies need to work hard to digest. For me, I never have gas issues after consuming beans. I feel as if the link between farting and beans has been grossly overstated, but if one does find that it’s a problem for them, then there are Kidney beans | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia solutions. One method of helping bean digestion is to soak beans overnight before cooking them; this helps soften up fibres in the legumes. Another method is to build up your bean tolerance. Start by eating smaller quantities, and then build up towards more substantial bean portions. If all else fails, you can purchase Beano, which is an over-the-counter medication that helps individuals digest fibre and prevent flatulence. You can find Beano at any major supermarket pharmacy. Today diabetes and high cholesterol are on the rise, and our collective diets (high in processed meats and carbohydrates) have left our bellies fat and created poor health in many of us. Beans are here to help! A study from 2012 suggested that a diet high in legumes is able to keep blood sugar levels constant and also lower the risk of coronary heart disease in patients with Type 2 diabetes. A high legume intake can also help people lose weight if they’ve relied heavily on grains as a source of fibre and protein. The British Journal of Nutrition even dedicated a whole issue to beans because they wanted the world to know how nutritious beans are. It’s time that the humble and stigmatized legumes break into the mainstream and become an accepted and loved food staple. The potential side effects are minor and worth risking to gain the benefits of the bean. Whether you prefer black beans, kidney beans, lima beans, or navy beans, the mighty legume is the ultimate food item if you are hoping to become healthier, wealthier (from grocery savings), and happier. It's the vinyl countdown Retro revival poised for heavy rotation revolution? Clive Ramroop, Contributor he picture snuck up on me as | absentmindedly scrolled through my newsfeed of the same old repetitive stuff. Grumpy Cat, raving political babble, pointless detail of someone’s lunch, more Grumpy Cat, complaints about the summer heat, Doctor Who, that damn cat yet again, some boring meme I don’t care to recall, a photo of vinyl records at a store display... blink. Stop scrolling. Moment of disbelief. Click pic to see the details better. Jaw drop. It was not an old photo 10 retouched for digital sharing. I could tell it was a recent photo because of the David Guetta album among the Hendrix, Deep Purple, and Beatles on a rack at London Drugs. A full stock of vinyl records being sold in the year 2013, no less. I knew Thad to see this for myself. A few days later, I dropped by a couple London Drugs locations in my area. The electronics department in both locations had their own stocks of vinyl albums: from current artists like Adele and Mumford & Sons, to re-issues of classics by Elvis Presley, Queen, and Miles Davis. A subsequent visit to HMV in Metrotown revealed another selection of vinyl. The whole experience felt like someone tossed a time warp into a giant blender and hit frappé. With iPods making endless playlists magically portable, and the compact disc barely avoiding joining cassettes in the passé bin, I wondered how there could be a market for what I thought was a long-outdated music format. Aside from DJs and pockets of vinyl] aficionados, is the demand really great enough for the venerable gramophone record? The answers I got surprised me a bit. One London Drugs employee told me that some of today’s youth had been curious about these big black discs, and began raiding their parents’ dusty old collections to give them a listen. Apparently it started up a revival market fuelled by interest in anything “retro.” Another employee talked about how vinyl yielded a “warmer” sound, as opposed to modern digital formats being prone to slight distortion. An old friend of mine told me how most jazz enthusiasts still listen to vinyl today, calling it the most physically durable format for recorded music, provided the medium undergoes proper care and maintenance. It brought to mind something I learned about one of Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Technology, how further advancement may lead to something lost from the past being revived. But I don’t know how deeply the vinyl resurgence has penetrated the mainstream market. I haven’t seen any vinyl stock at Future Shop or Best Buy, and Metrotown is the only HMV location where I’ve found them so far. However, small independent stores might stand a good chance of providing a substantial supply. And there’s a website called Music on Vinyl (www.musiconvinyl.com), complete with online catalogue. I couldn't resist a few captures during my visits, purchasing five albums: three by Michael Jackson (Off The Wail, Thriller, Bad), and two by Daft Punk (Discovery, Random Access Memories). I still primarily listen to my CDs for music enjoyment, but I had different reasons for my purchases: future collector’s items. I’m dead certain some people still have their original Beatles, Stones, or Zeppelin albums from half a century ago. Hey, I have to start somewhere.