Lentils Were Maxxing Before Maxxing Was a Thing

Protein maxxing. Fiber maxxing. Suddenly everyone is trying to squeeze more of both into every meal.

We support this message. And we'd also like to introduce you to an ingredient that's been quietly doing both since long before anyone added “maxxing” to the English language.

Lentils.

One cup of cooked lentils packs roughly 18 grams of protein and 16 grams of fiber.

EIGHTEEN. AND SIXTEEN.

No protein powder. No fiber supplement. No complicated morning routine involving a blender and seventeen ingredients. Just… lentils.

A Tiny Legume With a Suspiciously Good Résumé

Lentils are pulses—the edible seeds of legume plants—and nutritionally, they are kind of ridiculous.

Beyond all that protein and fiber, lentils contain iron, folate, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and other micronutrients. But here's where things get even more interesting. While lentils are busy feeding us, they're remarkably undemanding about what they need in return.

1,250 vs. 13,000 Liters of Water

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, producing one kilogram of lentils requires about 1,250 liters of water.

Producing one kilogram of beef?

About 13,000 liters.

That's roughly 90% less water.

We're not telling you what to put on your plate. We're food MAKERS, not the food police. We're just saying that for something containing this much protein and fiber, lentils ask remarkably little of the planet.

And Then They Go and Help the Soil

Most crops need nitrogen to grow. And adding nitrogen fertilizer to farmland requires resources and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

Lentils have another plan.

Like other pulses, they work with bacteria around their roots to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a form plants can use—a process called biological nitrogen fixation.

Translation? They can essentially make their own fertilizer.

The FAO reports that pulses obtain more than 60% of their nitrogen from the air, helping reduce the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

And when pulses are incorporated into crop rotations, the benefits can extend to whatever gets planted next.

So lentils aren't just relatively easy on the soil. They can actually leave something behind.

About That Carbon Footprint...

Growing, harvesting, transporting and cooking food all require resources. However, lentils fall way down at the low end of the emissions spectrum, especially compared with animal sources of protein.

Large-scale lifecycle research comparing foods across thousands of farms has consistently found that plant proteins such as peas, beans and other pulses produce dramatically fewer greenhouse-gas emissions per gram of protein than meat.

So when we choose lentils for soup, we're getting a whole lot of food for a relatively small environmental tab.

Not Bad for a Little Legume.

We love a food trend. Really. More protein? Great. More fiber? Absolutely. But sometimes the thing we're looking for isn't a newly engineered product with twelve claims printed across the front of the package.

Sometimes it's been around all along.

18 grams of protein.
16 grams of fiber.
A fraction of the water required by many other protein sources.
A crop that can actually help replenish its soil.

The lentil didn't suddenly become cool.

Anyway, We Made Soup.

Our Mediterranean Red Lentil Soup puts these tiny overachievers right where we like them: in a bowl.

Red lentils, vegetables, warm Mediterranean spices, and a whole lot of the good stuff we just spent this entire blog talking about. Protein-maxxing? Fiber-maxxing?

We just call it lunch.