Douglas Alpenstock wrote:It seems that cooking does not destroy the compound involved in favism. I suppose that's why there is reluctance on the part of food manufacturers -- liability issues. Hence the research.
A couple of interesting reads from Wikipedia:
Fava/broad beans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicia_faba
Favism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogenase_deficiency
I know, I know, Wikipedia isn't the last word on any subject. I do appreciate how it frames the parameters of the debate, allowing me to ask good questions.
Definetly. It helps a lot.
That being said, when an age old info comes up I dont discard it even if it does not make much sense. When I was a kid I loved to run under ladder (I dont know why I did that, just doing it) My grandmother told me it is actualy a veery big sin. I didn't check it and I was 25 years old when I learned that there is no such thing
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What I am tring to say is there is usually some truth or a reason behind any age old info. This age old made up "sin" probably helped saving someone breaking his arm/leg.
About fava beans - And I really dont want this to turn it into here is an info, see this article type of discussion - nor permies is a place for that (we dont like that here).
I checked and came up with this article :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924224419301992
where it says:
"Vicine and convicine are thermostable, but their concentration can be greatly reduced by soaking the seeds in water or in a weak acid solution (Hegazy & Marquardt, 1983; Jamalian & Ghorbani, 2005) prior to cooking. Thermal processing such as boiling, roasting, microwave irradiation, and frying can reduce the v-c content in faba bean seeds (Hussein, Motawei, Nassib, Khalil, & Marquardt, 1986; Ganzler & Salgó, 1987; Muzquiz et al., 2012; Cardador-Martinez et al., 2012). In addition, the combination of enzyme treatment with fermentation (Pulkkinen et al., 2019) or of alkaline extraction with acid precipitation can reduce v-c content by more than 99% (Vioque, Alaiz, & Girón-Calle, 2012). However, removal or destruction of v-c by dry milling for protein concentration on an industrial scale is problematic because air classification of faba bean protein (Tyler, Youngs, & Sosulski, 1981) concentrates the v-c up to nearly four-fold in the protein fraction (Fig. 1). Pitz, Sosulski, and Hogge (1980) reported a similar trend. Wet processing methods for protein purification, e.g., isoelectric precipitation, can remove anti-nutritional factors such as v-c from protein fractions, but these methods are costly and energy-intensive (reviewed in Singhal, Karaca, Tyler, & Nickerson, 2016). The best solution for the reduction of v-c is breeding for low v-c faba beans, and the discovery of a low-v-c accession with up to 95% reduction in v-c content compared to wild type has enabled the transfer of the low v-c trait to faba bean cultivars by sexual crosses (Duc, Sixdenier, Lila, & Furstoss, 1989)."
Long story short, at the end we reach to the same conclusion
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I will continue to boil beans for the time being - till we have some seeds of low v-c beans
Does low concentration of those coımpounds make people with favism sick? Frankly I have no clue.