During a lunch break today someone claimed that soybeans are toxic in their raw form and that they must be cooked, boiled, roasted etc. during processing to make them safe for consumption.
Is this true? Or did this person get raw soybeans mixed up with raw blowfish?
Dunno. Soybean sprouts are eaten raw. And there are other beans, such as kidney beans, which absolutely must not be eaten raw and even undercooked is a bad idea.
Yes, soybeans must be cooked in some way before they can be consumed. I am unsure if they can kill you, but they will make you very ill if eaten raw.
We had a lengthy discussion a while back, if you want to search. Best I could tell, “soybean” refers to several different strains/varieties of plants. They are all toxic to some extent if uncooked. Some of them are rendered harmless by simply boiling them. Others require more elaborate procedures, like fermenting.
By the way, fugu (blowfish) is toxic even when cooked. It’s only safe if you carefully separete the non-toxic meat from the toxic parts.
Raw soybeans aren’t all that bad for you. You just don’t want to make a steady diet of them. This review of plant lectins (glycoproteins) adresses the toxicity of raw soybeans:
Many plants have toxic effects if you eat too much of them over too long a period. Green things all need some method of defending themselves from the ravages of hungry herbivores.
Hmm, I wonder if castor beans are edible if you boil them long enough to denature the Ricin. They’d look very pretty in a three bean salad.