Dietary taboos on red beans

There are no absolute dietary taboos for the vast majority of healthy people to eat ordinary red beans on a daily basis. Only three special groups of people need to adjust their consumption or temporarily avoid dietary restrictions. Most of the "red bean combination conflicts" reported online are not supported by clear evidence-based medical evidence, so there is no need to be overly anxious.

A fan left me a message before, saying that he had read an article on a certain health account and drank red bean and barley water for a week. Not only did the edema not go away, but he suffered from stomach bloating and acid reflux every day. He asked if he had violated the taboo of red bean. In fact, to put it bluntly, I just don’t know whether my physique is suitable or not, and it has nothing to do with Hongdou itself.

Let’s start with the most frequently asked question about whether you can eat red beans with gout. I met a 62-year-old uncle at a community free clinic two months ago. He has a history of gout for 5 years and he can usually control it well. But after summer, he felt hot and drank a pot of red bean soup every day. As a result, his right toe suddenly swelled to the point where he couldn’t wear shoes, and his uric acid test soared to 580. In fact, two points need to be made clear here: the purine content of dried red beans is 128 mg per 100 grams, which is a medium-purine food. If you directly grind the dried beans into powder or drink thick red bean soup, the purine intake is indeed not low. Patients with gout in the acute stage are not recommended to eat more. ； However, some colleagues in the nutrition department have done tests. After boiling red beans for 15 minutes, nearly 60% of the purine will be dissolved into the soup. If you only eat the red bean paste with the soup filtered out, the purine content can be reduced to less than 30 mg per 100 grams, which is lower than most green leafy vegetables. Gout patients in remission can eat a small amount. In addition, traditional Chinese medicine believes that red beans can reduce dampness and reduce swelling, but in fact it helps to metabolize uric acid. The views of the two schools do not conflict. The core is how to eat and how much to eat.

To be honest, I have been involved in the pitfalls of red beans before. When I first learned about dietary therapy, I heard that red beans can help reduce edema. I boiled unsoaked hard red beans every day and ate them. The swelling made me unable to eat at night. Later, my teacher taught me to soak and then boil and add tangerine peel to solve this problem. For the elderly and children who are prone to flatulence, have irritable bowel syndrome, or have weak digestive functions, it is best to simmer the red beans for a while until they become sandy. Recently, my best friend drank two large glasses of iced red bean water every day for three consecutive days in order to take wedding photos in a small skirt. In the end, she was so bloated that she couldn't even zip up her wedding dress. She squatted in the dressing room and burped. This is because oligosaccharides such as raffinose and stachyose in red beans cannot be directly digested by the human body. When they are decomposed by bacteria in the intestinal tract, they will produce gas. If you eat hard red beans that are not cooked, or eat too much at one time, flatulence and acid reflux are common. But it’s not completely inedible. Soak the red beans for 24 hours in advance and change the water two or three times in between to soak out more than 70% of the oligosaccharides. When cooking, add a small piece of tangerine peel, which not only enhances the flavor, but also regulates qi and reduces bloating. I usually cook it this way myself and feed it to my mother who gets bloated after just two mouthfuls of whole grains. She never complained about discomfort.

There is another category that is often mentioned in Chinese medicine. People who are deficient in body fluids, such as people who often have dry mouth, dry stools, and dry eyes, should not eat large amounts of red beans for a long time. An aunt came to me to treat constipation before. She said that she had heard others say that red beans are detoxifying, so she drank red bean porridge every morning and evening, but her constipation became more serious. It is because of the diuretic and dampness-removing effect of red beans. Eating too much will accelerate the loss of body fluids. If people who are already dehydrated eat it, wouldn't it make them even more dry? By the way, I would like to mention here that many people are confused between ordinary red adzuki beans and medicinal adzuki beans. The round red adzuki beans we usually eat in milk tea and desserts have a weak diuretic effect, so even if you take two more bites, there is no big problem. If you buy the slender, darker adzuki beans, which have stronger medicinal effects, you need to pay more attention to the amount and don't eat more than 30 grams at a time.

At this point, someone must ask, where did the sayings online that red beans cannot be eaten with mutton, cooked with rice, or drank with tea come from? I deliberately read a lot of information and asked friends who practice Chinese and Western medicine, and found that most of them regard individual cases as general rules. For example, some people say that eating red beans and mutton together will cause internal heat, but red beans themselves are neutral. If you have a hot constitution, and you eat a pound of mutton and a large bowl of red bean porridge at a time, even if you don't add red beans, you will get angry just eating a pound of mutton. It has nothing to do with the combination. It is also said that cooking red beans and rice together will cause aphthous ulcers, which is even more nonsense. My family has always added rice to red bean porridge since I was a child, and no one has aphthous ulcers every day. The only thing that makes sense is not to drink strong tea immediately after eating red beans. The tannic acid in the tea will combine with the iron in the red beans and affect absorption. However, if you only drink half a cup of light tea after a meal, the amount of tannic acid will be very small and will not have any impact at all. There is no need to drink it after two hours.

In fact, I have been doing diet therapy for so many years, and the most annoying thing is that the taboos on ordinary foods are explained in such a mysterious way, as if taking one wrong bite will cause big trouble. Red beans are just an ordinary cereal, with much higher iron and dietary fiber content than rice. As long as you don’t feel uncomfortable eating them, you can pair them with rice dumplings, milk tea, or porridge. If you have underlying diseases, or you feel bloated or uncomfortable after eating, then just eat less or try something else. There are so many black and white taboos.~