Woman gives herself food poisoning after making common slow cooker mistake

01 October 2023 , 08:30

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It's an easy mistake to make with a slow cooker (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Even if you're a vegan, an absence of meat and dairy doesn't mean food poisoning stops being a risk.

One woman recently found herself very ill after making a vegan stew with her slow cooker, having made one common mistake. Anne Sullivan found a white bean stew recipe and diligently followed all the instructions - including pre-soaking the beans, then letting them simmer all day in the slow cooker, Yahoo reports.

However, seven hours later, the beans were still the same size. Anne still took a bowlful to work with her anyway and ate it, even though the beans were tough and chewy. She began to feel faint and dizzy, adding: "I must have looked awful, too, because my boss told me to go home and get some sleep. I felt like throwing up."

Over the course of the day, she began to feel a bit better and by the next day she was serving up the stew again, this time for both her and her boyfriend. Halfway through their meal her boyfriend wondered if it was the beans which had made Anne sick. They abandoned their meal and were heading out when the symptoms struck again.

Even though she'd pre-soaked the beans and let them stew for hours, they were still undercooked. This meant a naturally occurring toxin called phytohaemagglutinin was even more potent than normal, and was causing symptoms like diarrhoea, dizziness and nausea.

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Anne's mistake was not boiling the beans for ten minutes . What she should have done was soak the beans for five hours, drained, rinsed then boiled them for ten minutes. By whacking them in the slow cooker straight away she actually increased the toxin levels. "I had no idea - I think most people assume beans will cook in a slow cooker. Most recipes seem to assume you're using canned beans, which are fully cooked."

Zahra Mulroy