June 1, 2025

Rice and Beans

I would like to start this by preemptively addressing several valid critiques:

• Yes, it is pretentious to live a generally privileged life and write about the merits of eating rice and beans
• Yes you should also eat vegetables or you'll get really sick
• I don't eat rice and beans that frequently compared to many people in the world, probably a few times a week at most

Now that that's out of the way, here is the kernel of my argument: Rice and beans as a meal tastes good, is filling, is nutritious, and we should all eat it more. And in thinking about that, I got to chewing on, no pun intended, what philosophical ideas I hold that led me to this conclusion, or to being strange enough to want to write about it.

Why Simplicity Matters

For some reason I'm currently unable to pull on a string related to this essay without running into a play on words of some sort, so I'll just lean into the fact that this quote is from the philosopher Epicurus, who I assume is the namesake of the cooking website Epicurious. The infuriating amount of text and advertisements you have to scroll through on recipe websites is a topic for another day. Here's what Epicurus had to say about the matter of how we nourish ourselves, from a letter he sent to Menoeceus:

Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a person to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking and renders us fearless of fortune. -Epicurus

A couple things there: First, the benefits of "plain fare" as Epicurus calls it, are enhanced by how a person views it. Of course contextually any food is delicious when you're starving, as he says, but more interesting to me is the idea that simple food gives pleasure when the pain of want has been removed. What we crave, I think, is often just what we've been trained to expect. In the Western world (forgive the generalization), if you're over to a friend's house for dinner you probably expect a meat main, a side dish, some sort of salad, perhaps bread and butter, etc. How would you feel if you were at a dinner party with a group of friends and the host brought out two large bowls, one with steamed white rice and one with black beans?

That was the question I asked myself when brainstorming about this, and even though I'm a rice and beans advocate I would be thrown off by the arrangement. It's not seen as food fit for a special occasion. But as Epicurus calls it, this is the pain of want. I want a certain thing, and I am brought pain when I don't get it. Not real pain, obviously—just the dull ache of unmet dinner expectations. Think the Dinner Party episode of the sitcom The Office.

So I'd advocate that we should habituate ourself to simple foods that are needful for health, not switching our diets over entirely or anything but just working towards more balance. One obvious problem with this is that the tides of the modern food system are pushing against us. Eating rice and beans goes against the current of sugar and fat that I find sweeps me away more often than I'd like to admit in the signage of grocery store shelves.

Longevity in Plastic

I'm not talking about living longer, though whether people's fight to live forever is one worth fighting would be fun to dig into another day. I'm looking at you Brian Johnson, though I might be looking through you if your skin becomes any more see-through. No, I'm talking about the longevity of the bag of rice in my pantry. I'm moving soon, and found myself a bit nostalgic about the amount of meals this 5 pound bag of dry Whole Foods rice has provided me since coming into my life last fall.

I'm nearly through the bag as you can see, and the send off for it should line up with me moving out of my apartment. This bag of rice cost me $6.99, and at 50 servings total of cooked rice, shakes out to 14 cents per meal. In the terms of my generation, the tip I pay on an artistically crafted mocha latte could also buy me 7+ servings of rice.

Complete aside, but if you're going to do this, please get a rice cooker. This will offset the massive savings mentioned in the previous paragraph but it's a worthy investment. It tastes better. It just does. And it's easier. My cherished Zojirushi Micom is the gold standard I think, but really any one will do. Also this may be controversial but wash the rice. It tastes better. It just does. Thank you Bill Simmons for this rhetorical device.

Now beans are a little bit more costly, but it's critical to have the protein and nutrients provided by the legumes to round out your meal. I mix in great northern beans, black beans, pinto, garbanzo. Really you can't go wrong. And if there's some cheap vegetables at the grocery store in bulk, go ahead and get those involved too. All in all, rice and beans will let you eat cheap and healthy, and if your journey is anything like mine you'll grow to love them. And maybe you'll get the enjoyment that I think can come from something simple that fulfills all you need from it. In a culture where everything is designed to make us want more, choosing something that asks for nothing extra feels like going against the grain and being full enough not to care.