Vegan Recipes

Sure :)

Here is an article from University of Illinois extension service with a pretty succinct breakdown and citations: https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/live-well-eat-well/2024-02-29-kidney-beans-and-slow-cookers

Here is a much more in-depth source from NCBI: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8618113/

Here is an excerpt talking about the necessity of high temperatures: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21374488/

The main culprit is kidney beans since they are higher in those lectins. The soaking leeches some out into the water and heating to boiling denatures them. Lectins, afaik, are very nutritionally welcome and promote health benefits once broken down by high heat cooking, they're just dangerous in their raw state. A lot of things we eat are like that. Casava root is deadly until it's cooked into tapioca. Cashews are intense bio-irritant toxin until cooked down. Some plants are even dangerous depending on which half you eat... absolutely never eat potato fruit for example.

So as long as you raise the temperature for a small amount of time (it's recommended you boil kidney beans for 10 minutes, for example) it's enough to break down those lectins and render them nutritionally valuable. This is why it's often okay to just toss dry (washed) beans into a pressure cooker since they cook at a temperature above boiling. This is also why canned beans can be eaten directly out of the can, because the canning process is a miniature pressure cooker... they are cooked at high temperatures in the can itself generally.

I couldn't find a good list of all high phytohemagglutinin foods... I just know the ones to watch out for are dry beans. Kidney beans (any variety) and soy beans are the real big ones and very common in vegetarian and vegan foods in larger quantities, so it's worth keeping in mind.

All that is to say, absolutely don't avoid eating these foods when properly cooked. They are very healthy and delicious... just be aware of food safety. :)

You're right, lectines are denatured and thus become harmless when heated once. Unlike they've claimed, lentils abd chickpeas aren't harmless when raw, while peas are.

From the German Wikipedia:

Some vegetables contain lectins in their fresh state, which are toxic to humans or pets. These lectins are denatured by heating during boiling, frying or other forms of cooking and converted into a harmless chemical form. They retain this harmless form even after the food has cooled down again. Garden beans, chickpeas and soya beans should therefore only be consumed cooked.

However, compared to other beans, kidney beans contain an enormous amount of lectines:

The toxic compound phytohaemagglutinin, a lectin, is present in many common bean varieties but is especially concentrated in red kidney beans. White kidney beans contain about a third as many toxins as the red variety; broad beans (Vicia faba) contain 5 to 10% as much as red kidney beans.

Regarding the OC, using a slow cooker for preparing legumes is not recommended. Additionally, to reduce the content of lectines (and other unwanted substances), it's recommended to soack dried beans prior cooking and discard the remaining water:

Phytohaemagglutinin can be inactivated by cooking beans for ten minutes at boiling point (100 °C, 212 °F). Insufficient cooking, such as in a slow cooker at 80 °C/ 176 °F, is insufficient to deactivate all toxins. To safely cook the beans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends boiling for 30 minutes to ensure they reach a sufficient temperature for long enough to destroy the toxin completely. For dry beans, the FDA also recommends an initial soak of at least 5 hours in water which should then be discarded. Outbreaks of poisoning have been associated with cooking kidney beans in slow cookers.

Wikipedia - Common Bean