Declining Bean Consumption in Mexico
According to this morning’s León, Mexico newspaper AM, bean consumption per capita in Mexico has declined from 18.9 kilos a year in 1990 to 11.9 kilos a year in 2006. Or in pounds, it’s dropped from 40 pounds a year to 26 pounds. Still far more than, say, Americans eat but even so a 30% drop.
The Secretary of Agricultural Development in the state puts the decline down to the increase in the consumption of instant soups, which I take to mean rahmen or maruchan as it is now branded in Mexico. Women complain that cooking beans takes a lot of time and uses a lot of expensive gas.
To ruminate on this a bit, I’d add the following. As people become better off or meat becomes cheaper (and I believe both to have happened in Mexico in the last twenty years) then they tend to eat more meat and less beans as Ken Albala points out in his nice book, Beans. Add to that, that Mexican women, even in the country, rarely gather firewood any more but turn on the gas tank, and cooking now has a cost in money not just in time.
Judging by grocery store shelves, the consumption of canned beans is growing. Should one be sad that beans are declining or pleased that Mexicans have a choice?
I think you know my answer!
I guess what worries is me is that along with the decline in beans and increase in meat comes all the health problems associated with the modern US diet. And of course I love beans so it’s sad for me to see them slighted in favor of instant ramen, which by the way I saw being sold at the bull fights in Mexico City last month!
Hi Steve, Now why did I think you might chip in? Yes, I hate seeing good beans going too. I was interested to see that the girls who work for me, who get a sum of money every week to buy food for their midday meal, went through a big maruchan phase, thinking it was just wonderful. Then they went off it. I think it was partly that one of them was told in the nutrition classes that all mothers have to take if their children are to have a small scholarship that it wasn’t that nutritious. I think they partly tired of it. And they also found that they were preparing all kinds of extras to perk it up. I cannot get them, though, to prepare a pot of beans for themselves and for us. They will sometimes open a can of refried beans. My suspicion is that the bean pot represents everything they want to leave behind but it’s just a suspicion.
I think the health problems are a wash. Obesity and diabetes are terrible but so, I think, were the health problems suffered by the poor in past generations. It’s easy to forget the malnutrition, intestinal problems caused by bad water, lousy pregnancies, loss of teeth, and so on. In fact I heard an interesting talk last year by the head of research at the National Institute of Nutrition pointing out that in many parts of Mexico, particularly in the south, these all still exist.
“…rarely gather firewood any more but turn on the gas tank,…”
This is a very good thing for the land, especially as the population grows, and enough wood is no longer left in place to deteriorate into the soil as nutrition for future plants. In the USA 30-plus years ago it became illegal to gather fire wood near heavily used hiking trails because the depletion was turning the beauty spots into blights which were desolate of vegetation.
I would agree that health problems were as bad or worse ‘before’ and believe that thinking otherwise is a form of romantic “noble savage” adulation which is loosing ground in other disciplines.
I also suspect your location has something to do with it. I can’t imagine cooking beans at the altitude as being much fun.
I’ve met lots of Mexicans who still love beans and cook them regularly, both old school and moderns.
“Noble savage” or not, beans make sense in the modern diet. As do corn and chiles.I may like them for romantic reasons but they make good culinary and health sense, at least as much or more than instant ramen noodles with their low fiber and high fat. I’m not against them because they are modern, I dislike the because they aren’t very good.
I’m going to guess that bean consumption goes down even more as the last NAFTA protections for bean growers in Mexico come down this year and the Mexican market is flooded with bland, cheap beans from Michigan, Canada and China.