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In moderation Fresh fava beans can cause Favism

Hannibal Lecter, in The Silence of the Lambs

Fava Beans, a.k.a broad beans, arose in Israel and surrounding regions and quickly spread to Europe, Asia and Africa. They were important in the life of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Greeks used broad beans as ballots.

The Romans ate lomentum, a cake from bean flour, in times of grain shortage. Roman gladiators ate beans and barley before a fight. During a famine, Louis XV ate bean bread to show solidarity with his subjects.

Food Uses: Broad beans are edible boiled, fried or roasted. The leaves are edible too. Doubanjiang, used in Sichuan cuisine, is a spicy, salty fermented bean paste. Ful medames, the national breakfast of Egypt, consists of simmered, partially mashed broad beans cooked with olive oil, parsley, onions and lime juice. Its filling nature makes ful medames popular during Ramadan.

Nutrition: 100 gram of raw fava beans contains 88 Calories. The bean is low in sodium and saturated fat. It is an excellent source of protein, a good source of riboflavin, niacin, phosphorus and potassium, and a very good source of folate, copper and manganese.

Favism usually results from eating fresh fava beans and is common in the Mediterranean. It occurs most commonly in males between the ages of one and five. Within 5 to 24 hours of eating fava beans, patients experience headache, nausea, back pain, chills, and fever, followed by haemoglobinuria and jaundice. Patients often require blood transfusions as treatment. The disease results from an inborn deficiency of Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). Evolutionarily, G6PD deficiency may have conferred a survival advantage against malaria.

Fava beans contain levodopa, a compound used to treat Parkinson’s disease. However, they are not a substitute for standard treatments for the disease.

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