The bringer of spring, fava is the first vegetable to grace Turkish tables each year. Its bright green pods are picked early and cooked whole with onions, olive oil, and tomato paste; mature pods are dried, shelled, and used to make an appetizer of mashed fava beans often topped with dill and raw onion.
Among the first domesticated plants, fava beans served as one of the sole beans of Europe for thousands of years until New World varieties reached the other side of the Atlantic. Despite their long history and nearby origin, fava beans have a dark side lurking throughout the Mediterranean region. Favism, a hereditary disease most prevalent in the Mediterranean occurs at a rate of up to 1:10000 in some regions. The red blood cells of sufferers lack the G6PD enzyme necessary to break down a protein specific to tasty favas. These unfortunate victims suffer fevers, jaundice, anemia, and even death just from eating a few green little beans.
This might be the reason why famous mathematician and more, Pythagoras, forbid his already vegetarian followers from partaking in protein-packed fava beans. No one knows the true reason why Pythagoras hated a humble vegetable with so much passion; it’s also up for debate why a plant toxic to so many remained popular in the Mediterranean for millennia, or why favism wasn’t snuffed out by evolution entirely.
One theory was forged while treating the malaria that once plagued the region. Victims of favism seemed to suffer a similar reaction to antimalarial drugs. After much research, it was discovered that fava beans contain the same compound effect in treating malaria, therefore acting as a natural source of prevention. In addition, sufferers of favism seem to be less likely to be infected as the malaria parasite fares much worse in red blood cells lacking the G6PD enzyme. Favism likely prevailed evolutionarily thanks to this genetic quirk. So these very Mediterranean beans are more than just the bringers of spring, they serve as delicious preventative medicine.
