For Madeline Schapiro, better known online as @bean_supporter, beans are more than just a pantry staple.
Schapiro’s obsession with legumes began while she was a sophomore in college, when she was experiencing unexplained health issues that doctors chalked up to stress. Unsatisfied with that explanation, she started searching for answers on her own and came across the Karen Hurd Bean Protocol, a nutritional approach that, put plainly, relies on eating a lot of beans.
Without paying for the program, she did what any college student with a required meal plan might do: started eating a lot of beans in her dining hall. Schapiro said her health improved — and if she ever stops eating beans, some of her symptoms return. Needless to say, beans stuck around.
Years later, Schapiro has become something of a bean connoisseur. From “Beantella” to “beanana bread” she has garnered an audience of tens of thousands online for her bean-forward recipes. Now a full-time recipe developer and content creator, Schapiro spends her days experimenting in the kitchen and finding unexpected ways to work legumes into familiar foods. Her mission? To prove that legumes can be far more versatile — and luxurious — than people give them credit for.
We chatted with Schapiro about the unlikely origins of Bean Supporter, the creative process behind her most unexpected recipes and her mission to rebrand the humble legume.
Spoon University: What inspired you to start posting content about beans?
Madison Schapiro: I’m not really a social media person. It wasn’t something I used in my life before June of 2025, which is when I created Bean Supporter, which is my online persona. I had gotten in a bike crash, gotten a concussion, and had some life events happen, and I was kind of shaken up. I was on the phone with a friend, and they said, “Why don’t you just eat beans for 30 days and post it online?” And I was like, “That’s a great idea.” And my friend was like, “That was a joke. We don’t actually want you to eat only beans for 30 days.” And I was like, “No, I’m only going to eat beans for 30 days.” So that’s what I did. I only ate beans, nothing else.
No one should do that. Let me clarify. You should eat all foods. You should never only eat one food. But I only ate beans for 30 days and posted it online. Now we’re sitting here 15 months later. Now it’s my job, so I eat beans — and other foods.
SU: A lot of your recipes use beans in ways people probably wouldn’t expect. What does the process of coming up with a bean-focused recipe look like?
MS: Beans talk to me, like I’ll be sleeping and I’ll wake up in the middle of the night because the beans have come and they’re chattering. They’re like, “Madeline, we need this,” and I’m like, “Okay, okay, guys. Sure.”
It definitely doesn’t come from the bean itself first. I think of a dish, or the beans will call to me with a dish, and I’ll be like, “Okay, let’s do that.”
I, in my own personal life outside of Bean Supporter, work a lot with a lot of heirloom beans, hard-to-find bean varieties. I am an absolute bean lover. But I realize that that isn’t accessible for everyone, so a lot of my development I try to do with beans you can find across the country, and ideally in a canned variety.
I cook my beans from dry, but I understand that not everyone can, and when I started my bean journey in undergrad, that wasn’t a thing I could do. So yeah, I think of a recipe, like a pancake. “Okay, let’s make it with a bean.” I want cacio e pepe. “Okay, let’s make it with beans.” And then I go from there.
SU: Are there certain types of beans that work better for certain recipes? How do things like texture, flavor or the way they cook influence what you use?
MS: Absolutely. I think one of the hardest parts of developing recipes with beans is there’s an assumption that beans are beans in our society. I’ll develop a recipe, and it’ll call for a chickpea, and someone will say, “I used a navy bean, and the texture was awful.” And you’re like, “Well, yeah. Chickpeas are a lot firmer.”
If I’m making a beanut butter cup, which is a recipe I have, I’m using a chickpea. And if I’m making my beanut butter, I’m using a navy bean or a great northern beans. For soups, sauces, stews, anything that I want fully blended, I don’t want the texture of the bean, so I’m using a navy bean, sometimes a great northern bean. They break down wonderfully, become super creamy, indistinguishable. Something like a chickpea is going to be much firmer and hold its texture. Not all beans are created equal.
Then some of them have more taste. I develop a lot with red lentils. That’s like what my beanana bread is, and what my lentil cookies are. And someone will say, “Can I use green lentils or brown lentils?” Structurally, that’s going to work. But green and brown lentils have a vegetal flavor, and you can taste the bean. If you make my beanana bread with a green lentil, it’ll taste like beans, and then you’ll comment on my Substack and say, “It tasted like beans! It was so gross!” And I’m like, “Yeah, it did! It did taste like beans. That is why I didn’t develop it with a green or brown lentil.”
Maybe I also need to do a better job of educating, but the bean choices I make are extremely deliberate, based on use case. And in some cases, they are subs, and in some cases, there aren’t. If I’m making a stew or chili, choose whatever bean you want. It’s going to taste like a bean. But if I’m making a smoothie, that’s not welcome to put a chickpea in where I’m using a navy bean. It’s going to be gritty, and then you’re gonna tell me that the smoothie was gritty and you felt the bean texture. And yeah, I know you did. I would too.
SU: What do you think people misunderstand most about beans or cooking with them?
MS: Oh my gosh! The comment I get the most anywhere, all the time, on TikTok is, “fart goes the butt.” It’s some reference to something that I don’t understand because I am not on media, but everyone seems to love it, so it must be a reference to something online.
Beans don’t make you gassy if you’re cooking your beans properly, so this includes soaking, kombu, all those things, because some people don’t actually fully cook their beans. They keep their beans al dente, and if your bean isn’t fully cooked, it’s going to cause insane gastrointestinal distress. But beans actually won’t make you gassy.
A lot of that is because 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber, and so beans are a super high source of fiber. Someone eats tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and they’re like, “I’m getting a lot of fiber!” No, you’re not. I mean, they’re great foods. Vegetables are great foods, but fiber-rich foods aren’t that common. Chia seeds, basil seeds, psyllium husk, beans. Fiber-rich foods, many people aren’t eating those.
They start eating beans. They get really gassy. Yeah, their body’s waking up to the fact that it hasn’t had fiber in however many years, and then your body is, you know, going a little bit crazy. Once you’re eating enough fiber, your body will be fine.
SU: Where do you see your content going from here?
MS: My goal is for people to eat more beans, and my goal is to reclaim the narrative around beans. My Substack is titled “The Luxury of Legumes” because I think beans are truly a luxury food, which I get a lot of pushback on because beans are affordable, but affordable and luxury should not be antithetical to each other. You can have something that’s affordable, that’s luxurious, and the luxuriousness of beans is how amazing they make you feel.
So, where exactly my content is going? We will see. But no matter what, I’m here to rebrand beans as a luxury and as the sensational food that they are, and also make it clear that luxury doesn’t have a price component. It just has a feeling of wonder.