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The dangers of raw beans
The danger comes from eating raw beans or undercooked beans. Eating just four raw, soaked beans is enough to cause symptoms of foodborne illness. Crockpots are popular methods for cooking raw beans, but this method can yield dangerous results. Slow cooking raw beans normally requires hours of cooking on a low setting, but crockpot temperatures vary. If the low setting on a crockpot is below 180°F, then slow cooking the beans won’t make them safe to eat. In fact, undercooking beans increases the toxicity by five times. Yikes!

The moral of the story is to eat beans from a can or to boil raw beans properly before cooking. For added safety, follow the FDA recommendation to soak beans for five hours before cooking them. Kidney beans may be toxic, but they’re easy to cure for good eating.

Bean Food safety & management

How to avoid poisoning from red beans
By Jonan Pilet on May 3, 2021
Cooking your own beans is a great way to save money, reduce waste and lower your sodium consumption, but eating improperly cooked beans can lead to serious illness. This is especially true for kidney beans.

Eating raw or undercooked kidney beans can lead to food poisoning, including symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Only a few beans are needed to cause poisoning.

Kidney beans, or red beans, contain a natural protein, Lectin, that is found in many plants, animals and humans. However, at high levels, like that found in raw or undercooked kidney beans, the protein can act as a toxin.

How to properly cook kidney beans and destroy toxins

Beans should be soaked in water for at least five hours.
Soaking water should be dumped, and the beans should be boiled in fresh water for at least 30 minutes.
Do not use a slow cooker. Slow cookers do not get hot enough to destroy the toxins in kidney beans.
The science
Lectins are widely occurring, sugar-binding proteins, but some of them may become toxic at high levels. Lectins are known for their ability to agglutinate many mammalian red blood cell types, alter cell-membrane transport systems, alter cell permeability to proteins, and generally interfere with cellular metabolism, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Among the lectins known to have toxic effects is phytohemagglutinin (PHA), which occurs at high levels in the seeds of legumes. This compound is the legumes seeds’ natural defense against plant pests and pathogens. PHA is destroyed by adequate cooking.

Some variation in toxin stability has been found at different temperatures. However, it has been found that boiling the beans for 10 minutes at 100 degrees C (212 degrees F) completely destroyed the toxin. To be safe, consumers should boil the beans for at least 30 minutes to ensure that the product reaches sufficient temperature, for a sufficient amount of time, to completely destroy the toxin.

Slow cookers should not be used to cook the beans or dishes that contain them. Studies of casseroles cooked in slow cookers revealed that the food only reached internal temperatures of 75 degrees C (167 degrees F) or less.

Daily Bean packhouse hygiene checklist

In late 2017, about 100 students/staff were hospitalised after consuming undercooked common beans (biandou) at a school canteen in Mainland China. Consumption of common beans (e.g. green beans, French beans) and other beans (e.g. red kidney beans, white kidney beans) without proper processing may cause poisoning due to the naturally present toxins lectins (e.g. phytohaemagglutinins). Acute poisoning symptoms may include vomiting, diarrhoea, and abdominal pain.

Lectins are heat-liable glycoproteins widely distributed in legumes and some oilseeds. Thorough soaking and adequate heat treatments (e.g. cooking at 100°C for 10-20 min) of beans can denature lectins. Hence, appliances that cook beans at lower temperatures for several hours (e.g. slow cookers/casseroles) may not reach sufficiently high temperatures to destroy lectins. Conversely, commercially tinned/canned beans are safe to eat without further cooking as they have been subjected to thorough heat-treatment.

Consumers are advised to soak and cook beans thoroughly to minimise exposure to lectins, and not to use raw or inadequately cooked beans in the preparation of salad dishes.