My heart sang while watching a recent episode of The White Lotus’ latest season. Not because of Aimee Lou Wood’s poolside apparel or the idyllic Thai sunsets, but when Leslie Bibb’s character Kate lay on a sun lounger with friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) and extolled the virtues of beans – the secret ingredient behind her youthful glow.

‘One day I decided to trick my mind into loving beans, and now I do,’ she said, hitting back at her famous friend who’d (with more than a touch of patronisation) said she understood that her body weight percentage probably wasn’t as good as her friends’ because of the food offerings in Texas, where Kate lives (Jaclyn lives in LA, of course).

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And while most of the people watching probably felt the weighty burn of a barb from a ‘friend’ – and you know they’re probably not talking about a 65p can of chickpeas – watching on Monday, I just wanted to shout ‘Yessssss! Me too! I love beans!’ Because humble pulses are having a moment and their mention in White Lotus has only confirmed their status in the zeitgeist.

I have long been a fan of beans. I don’t discriminate against type but having tasted a jar of Bold Bean Co a couple of years ago – the deliciously seasoned, wonderfully bulbous chickpeas – I have admittedly become a bit of a bean snob. (They say you will want to eat the whole jar on the label, and trust me, you will.)

I’m not the only one. Beans are all over foodie Instagram with bean-centric recipes shared hundreds of times and butter bean dishes attracting the same praise and virality as runny eggs or giant croissants once did. And it’s translating to the supermarket aisles: according to Ocado, sales of butter beans are up 22 per cent.

The team behind multi award-winning indie food magazine Pit loves beans so much it baked a bean issue (their pun not mine!), with essays dedicated to Heinz nostalgia, black bean sauce and the power of beans in folklore.

For Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Beans Co, beans have long been the world’s closest thing to a perfect food: ‘I’m a little bean-mad, but I think people are now cottoning onto the fact that they are the world’s closest thing to a perfect food – full of natural protein and fibre, fundamental to regenerative systems that look after our soil and the answer to many health and sustainability challenges.’

She’s keen to encourage people ‘to lean into flavour combinations that they’re familiar with,’ such as mushroom and parmesan beanotto (beans instead of rice) or butter bean puttanesca.

Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Bean Co

Even fashion’s favourite food artist Laila Gohar has written recently about her lifelong obsession with beans. ‘I am most drawn to the humble foodstuffs. Potatoes, beans, radish – they are the jewels of the earth, and I think they are worthy of celebration,’ she wrote in her column for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It.

She keeps a ‘sizeable collection’ of more than 50 varieties of dry shelling beans including scarlet runner, tiger’s eye and Sorana (a type of cannellini grown in Tuscany). Gohar loves them so much, she’s made plates featuring painted beans for her homeware brand Gohar World, and made a bean collection with luxury bag brand Métier. The launch event? A bean party at her Tribeca studio in New York of course.

‘So there you have it,’ she wrote. ‘A fashion dinner and beans can exist in the same sentence.’

Like two beans in a pod. We couldn’t agree more.

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