Here's a fun fact: Eating soaked raw or undercooked beans can result in food poisoning. The culprit is a plant lectin known as phytohaemagglutinin or simply hemagglutinin, a chemical known to cause agglutination of mammalian red blood cells and to disrupt cellular metabolism. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, phytohaemagglutinin is found in many types of beans, but red kidney beans contain the highest levels of hemagglutinin. White kidney beans contain a third as much toxin while broad varieties of beans contain 10% as much hemagglutinin as red kidney beans. This is still plenty, since you only need to eat 4-5 undercooked red kidney beans to get sick.Bean Poisoning Symptoms
Symptoms start to appear within 1 to 3 hours after consuming the beans and include nausea and vomiting followed by diarrhea and, in some cases, abdominal pain. Although the symptoms may be severe enough to warrant hospitalization, they resolve spontaneously within a few hours. Everyone is susceptible, regardless of age, gender or other factors.Preventing Bean Poisoning
It is easy to prevent bean poisoning. The recommended procedure is to boil soaked raw beans in water for at least 10 minutes. It is important that the water reach boiling or 100°C, since exposing the compound to 80° C actually increases its toxicity about 5 times.Share Your Experience
Had you ever heard of hemagglutinin in beans or bean poisoning? Have you ever experienced this type of food poisoning? Feel free to post a reply.Photo: Red kidney beans contain the highest level of hemagglutinin. (Sanjay Acharya).
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Comments
My wife has just had a severe attack of vomiting and diarrhoea. The suspect is the falafel we had for dinner- made from white butter beans, or dried runner beans. The recipe used from Claudia Roden’s book specifies making the rissoles from uncooked beans. They are then deep fried. I found an article from the Independent 2008 called Beware of the Beans- a family using the same recipe (shallow fried however) all came down with severe symptoms. As I have not as yet had the symptoms, I guess either my wife ate one that had not been at 100 degrees for long enough… even white beans have enough lectin to cause problems.
Yes! At Christmastime we used a store-bought mix of hummus. Everyone who ate it got sick. We used to love hummus, now we
are leery of it. : (
I had an attack yesterday after consuming red kidney beans. I had all the symptoms especially abnominal pains. I took milk of magnesia and slept for over 2hours. Now I’m avoiding red beans.
I ate undercooked kidney beans yesterday around 3pm. This wave of nausea came over me around 630pm last night. I had a headache and just felt nauseated, so at 8pm I went to bed. I woke up around 630am and still felt pretty lousy. Then the diarrhea hit me. It’s now 930am I feel tired but it’s getting better. I’ll never do that again!
I’m having a bad attack right now. feel dizzy, my stomach feels really tight and my throat kills. got it from eating 450 grams of runner beans and am wondering if the amount i ate is severe
I have always been sensitive to kidney beans, refusing to eat them as a child. I think some people might be more sensitive than others. I was once in a room adjacent to an industrial kitchen. As time went on, I was doubled over in pain with stomach cramps. It turned out they were making kidney bean casserole.
The last time I ate chilli with kidney beans in it, I picked them all out, but still reacted. My digestive track started spasming and it took months to settle down. Lost 15 pounds.
I won’t go near them any more and am glad to finally learn of PHA so that I can make sure to avoid other foods with lower quantities.
Oh my yes…I had a terrible bout of vomiting/diarrhea/gas/abdominal pain that lasted several hours and kept me home from work for 2 days after eating pinto beans I had cooked several hours in a crockpot without prior soaking or boiling! I will NEVER do this again!! I had been told if beans were fresh (ie not old..rather this years beans which are grown locally in my area) I did not need to soak/boil them prior to cooking!! How wrong that info is!!
I had never heard of this type of bean food poisoning!!
I went to a new restaurant last night and all i had was this deep fried falafel fritter looking thing. Within three hours i was vomiting the falafel with blood. Ive been bloated, gassy, and have a bad case of sulfuric burps. Now i am running to the bathroom every 5 minutes with the runs and it doesn’t look like its going to pass any time soon. Its safe to say i will never eat falafel again