Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Kidney Bean Poisoning


Last week Eric was listening to Dead Heat by Dick Francis. In the book, one of the characters was poisoned using kidney beans. I had heard this mentioned before, but after Eric brought it up, I decided to do a little more research.

Apparently, raw and undercooked red kidney beans can cause a wicked case of food poisoning. As few as 3 or 4 can have you miserable for hours.

From what I read, to avoid this all dried kidney beans must be soaked for a few hours and boiled for at least 10 minutes. Because of this, it is not recommended that you cook raw kidney beans in a crock pot.

I had never heard of this before. I couldn't believe all of the hits returned when I googled "kidney bean poisoning." Why is this information not more well known?

Here are a few of the sources I read through.

Is this news to you too, or is it just me?

8 comments:

SilverPoet 11:15 PM  

Your presentation is colorful and concise, an informative read. Now I know why those kidney beans I tried a while back may have given me such a stomach ache!

Mary Ann 6:04 AM  

Interesting! I didn't know this before. Thanks for sharing.

A Christian Mom 7:09 AM  

I didn't know this, either. Thank you for sharing it!

Judy 10:15 AM  

I didn't know this....and I love kidney beans! I guess lucky for me I always buy the kind in a can. Great information to know though.

Michelle M. 7:02 PM  

I'm glad you shared that! I had never heard of this before.

Jennifer 7:07 AM  

I haven't heard this! Thank goodness I read this before I cooked my bag of kidney beans. It would have been the first time cooking them myself, and I probobly would have ended up sick!

Nancy 9:08 AM  

Who knew? Not me. Thanks for sharing this info. Guess it's a good thing I always buy the canned kidney beans.

Anonymous,  11:13 AM  

Oh my gosh! I'd never heard of this before, but this may be the cause of a "virus" that visits our family frequently. Sometimes, when we forget to soak our beans overnight, we'll try a rapid soak with them (we eat a lot of kidney beans). I wonder if the beans are not being cooked all the way. Something to consider, for sure. Thanks so much for the information!

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