Green Beans & Phasin?

[gpeppers]

Recently, I bought a book called "Making Sauerkraut and Pickled
Vegetables at Home", by Klaus Kaufmann. On page 16, I was surprised
to read the following about raw green beans:
"Beans are the only vegetables that have to be cooked before
preservation. They contain a toxic substance called phasin, a protein
that interferes with digestion and decomposes when heated. Never
serve raw beans on a salad plate!"

I've seen recipes for lacto-fermenting green beans which didn't call
for cooking the beans first, and some that do. However, re-reading
this I am interpreting it to mean it's the raw green bean in general,
not the fact that you are lacto-fermenting them. This gives new
significance to the last sentence, "never serve raw beans on a salad
plate"! Then I read some controversy that "string" beans are
different than "green" beans. Has anyone heard about this or who has
two cents on it? Do I have to cook (blanch) them? I don't want to
make myself sick, but I don't want to cook them if I don't have
to.

[Stacie Boschma]

I have no informed comment, but I did run a quick google of "phasin" and didn't see it linked in any way to outbreaks of illness or anything.

I imagine that, much like Sally Fallon's emphasis on phytic acid in nuts, it's one of those things that maybe we're modestly better off without, but can't really pinpoint any difference without it being pointed out.

Personally, my one batch of fermented green beans got super funky, super fast, and I haven't tried making 'em again. Maybe blanching would have taken care of whatever bug overran the lacto.

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Stacie Boschma
Decatur, GA

[Peter Vachuska]

I grew up eating quantities of raw green beans every summer out of our
large garden and find it hard to believe that they are poisonous.
Certainly people do consume toxins and survive, but it must be a very
mild toxin considering all of the raw beans I used to stuff myself
with. -Peter

[mike nadeau]

I recall a slight agitation in my throat last summer eating green beans from the garden - though don't feel it is a strong toxin.  The more I learn about vegetables, the more I hear that they should always be cooked or fermented to gain the nutritional value.  Often, raw vegetables can actually deplete the body of it's minerals.  When I eat raw lettuce greens, I always let them marinate in olive oil and apple cider vinegar (my homemade salad dressing) to weaken the cell walls making it more bio-available.

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Many Thanks - Mike

[Elizabeth Evans]

See "Toxicity" in this Wikipedia article. In addition to kidney beans, runner beans should NEVER be eaten raw.

Elizabeth

[kurt]

I searched the biomedical literature - can't find anything about phasin toxicity in edible beans except maybe this article from 1951 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12997977) which  doesn't have an abstract. I did find another article about someone who had a toxic response to chewing the bark of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), which is in the bean family (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15083944) I don't think that's exactly relevant, though. I've eaten tons of raw scarlet runner beans and am alive to tell about it.

While fermenting does change/add the nutrient profile of many foods (it's one of the reasons we do it, right?), I can't figure out how raw vegetables could possibly deplete the body of minerals. Can you supply a reference for that claim? We evolved as a species eating mostly raw plants (your  teeth and saliva do a number on those cell walls, too)

cheers,

Kurt

[Nicole Platte]

One way to deplete the body by eating vegetables is to eat vegetables that are grown in poor soil and have little nutrition. To digest these, we must give up some of our mineral stores, whereas the minerals ought to be coming from the food itself. 

Nicole Platte
Burning Bush Gardens

[kurt.allerslev.reynertson]

Nonsense. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables, even grown in poor soil, can't possibly deplete your body of nutrients. If the soil is really that bad, the plant won't thrive and there'll be nothing to eat. If you eat a poorly balanced diet devoid of fruits and vegetables (ie. nothing but white rice), you will certinly encounter vitamin and nutrient difficiencies.

[Elizabeth Evans]

I'm curious, Nicole, can you give a source for this information? I would like to know more on this topic if it is correct.

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 11:53 PM, Nicole Platte <nicole...@gmail.com> wrote:
One way to deplete the body by eating vegetables is to eat vegetables that are grown in poor soil and have little nutrition. To digest these, we must give up some of our mineral stores, whereas the minerals ought to be coming from the food itself. 

Kurt, the exception here might be food that we commonly call "vegetables" that are actually seeds. Well-developed green beans, lima beans and "shelly" beans fall into this category. They contain phytic acid, which IS an "anti-nutrient," a substance that blocks prevents your body from absorbing other nutrients. It doesn't direct "rob" minerals from your body, but it does prevent your body from getting nutrition from the food you eat. An interesting question is "at what point do green beans develop phytic acid?"

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:52 AM, kurt.allerslev.reynertson <alle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nonsense. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables, even grown in poor soil, can't possibly deplete your body of nutrients. If the soil is really that bad, the plant won't thrive and there'll be nothing to eat. If you eat a poorly balanced diet devoid of fruits and vegetables (ie. nothing but white rice), you will certinly encounter vitamin and nutrient difficiencies.

 

Fermenting beans is one treatment that will reduce the phytic acid. But the question that was raised at the beginning of this thread was whether fermenting un-cooked beans is safe because of the toxic compounds that are found in in some beans -- and will fermentation remove those compounds?

For myself, I really do want to try "dilly beans" this summer. But I will make them from beans that I grow myself and I will do "due diligence" into the variety I am growing to make sure that it is not either a red or white kidney bean. Most seed catalogs don't give this information -- I will have to do some digging around in sites on heirloom varieties.

Does fermentation remove these toxins? An interesting question for a food researcher with a lab that can detect them, or perhaps an ambitious college class.

Elizabeth

[Nicole Platte]

Sure: it's a major premise of RBTI, the program of human nutrition for remineralization that brought me out of severe illness.

Unfortunately, when plants are grown in poor soil but just given NPK, they stay alive, albeit with a lot of "drugs" to control their "symptoms". Digesting these foods is expensive for the body. They are a net loss.

Here's a quote from http://www.advancedideals.org/017_right_calcium.html

What is the ideal source of calcium?

The most ideal source of calcium should be our food supply. However, our food today is grossly lacking in mineral, especially calcium, because of the poor farming practices. Back in the mid 80's one research group sampled over 400 plants from farms across Midwestern America. It found that mineral levels, in the plants had dropped between 8% and 68%. Because of soil mineral depletion and few farmers being aware of how to grow top quality food, calcium supplements are a necessity to supply the calcium actually needed.

Aren't organically grown foods a good source of calcium?

Unfortunately, purchasing “organically grown” foods does not assure sufficient calcium in your diet either. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against organic foods. However, what is not being addressed by organic growers is the quality of the food they are growing—especially the calcium content. Organic principles of growing are great as far as they have come. The problem is that they have not come far enough. In other words, organic growers are growing clean foods, free of toxic chemicals, but they fall very short when it comes to total nutrient mineral quantity and quality—80 percent of the missing mineral is calcium. Yes, this is a very serious problem because the most toxic foods are not the ones contaminated with herbicides and pesticides. In reality, the most toxic foods are those that are grown on calcium deficient soil and passed off, to an ignorant public, as clean fresh healthy nutrient rich food. Toxic, because these mineral-energy deficient foods contribute to the perpetuation of the rampant degenerative disease process.

Nicole Platte
Burning Bush Gardens

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[Nicole Platte]

Not nonsense. Plants grow in poor soil. And make poor food. Haven't you ever had a tasteless apple or orange, like a really awful one? The sweet ones have minerals and the tasteless ones don't. But if you eat the tasteless kind, or even a moderately tasteless one, the body still has to use its resources to digest it, and for naught. That's what I mean. When my kids don't want their broccoli, it's because it's terrible broccoli, not terrible kids. They love sweet broccoli grown in rich soil.

Nicole Platte
Burning Bush Gardens

[gyps...@gmail.com]

I have that book and read the same thing AFTER I had put raw green beans in several of my mixed vegie ferments... they seemed to ferment fine and we did enjoy them... That said, I know nothing of the science behind their statement (if there is some).  Also, I have eaten lots of green beans off the plant... none of them ever made it to the kitchen :)  That is all I 'know'....

 

Blessings,

Marie

NE Florida, USA

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 8:51 PM, gpeppers <gpep...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Annemieke]

Surely we're not all alike? Our neighbour loves raw beans in quantity,
whereas the mere idea horrified me even before my digestion got messed
up.

[Elizabeth Evans]

At the risk of adding to an OT strand (which began with the question of whether possible toxins in green beans are destroyed by fermentation), NOT all green beans are alike. Some have significantly higher amounts of phytohaemogluttinin, which causes nausea, stomach pain, vomiting etc. I suppose it is possible that some people are tolerant of it as well, but it seems unlikely, since it is a real toxin (destroyed by cooking) rather than one of those proteins that are more-or-less digestible depending on factors that include both genetics and gut flora. On the internet, the only sources I could find for phasin in beans being a problem all seemed to refer back to the same original source, which makes it dubious for me -- but the info on phytohaemogluttinin is very broad.  Kidney beans and runner beans are particularly high.

Elizabeth

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[DrPage]

I have the book and read it the same way at first, likely influenced by the nice picture of string beans adjacent the text you quoted. But after re-reading it, i believe that the sentence you quoted is aimed specifically at the bean seeds typically dried and boiled, like the kidney beans. Note, the next paragraph/sentence says "Cut, wax and string beans, as well as broad or "tick" beans are suitable for lactic acid fermentation". Lack of precise wording/communication by the authors appears to be the problem here, not poisons in string beans.

I think that toxicity of "green" beans as described by Europeans might refer to, e.g., fresh kidney beans and pods, where  'green' indicates the quality of live from the vine and not dried and cooked. Another American name for string beans is 'green beans' but this may not be the case in Germany.

I am a fellow newbie trying to piece it all together and have no expertise.

[Nancy H Alwin]

If raw string beans were poison I would be dead a LOOOOOONG time ago! I eat them straight off the plant, they are Deeeliscious!! ;)

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