Is Mung Bean a Cooling Food? A Detailed Guide to Who Should Avoid It and How to Store It

In the hot summer weather, people often eat some mung bean soup to relieve the heat. The heat-clearing effect of mung beans lies in the skin, while the detoxifying effect lies in the flesh. Although mung beans are good, they should not be eaten too much. Let's take a look below at whether mung beans are a cooling food, who should not eat them, and how they should usually be stored.

1. Are mung beans a cooling food? Who should not eat them?

Mung beans are a cooling food, cold in nature. People with a constitution of yang deficiency, weak spleen and stomach, or diarrhea should eat them with caution, and they are generally not suitable for eating in winter.

People with a cold constitution should not eat them, such as those with cold limbs and fatigue, cold pain in the waist and legs, or diarrhea and loose stools. Eating mung beans will instead worsen the symptoms and may even trigger other diseases.

The elderly, children, and those with a weak constitution should not eat them. This is because the protein content in mung beans is even higher than that in chicken. Large-molecule proteins need to be converted by enzymes into small-molecule peptides and amino acids before they can be absorbed by the human body. These people have relatively poor gastrointestinal digestive function, and it is difficult for them to digest mung bean protein in a short time, making them prone to diarrhea caused by indigestion.

People who are taking various medications should not eat them. Because mung beans have a detoxifying effect, if the medicines taken by patients, whether traditional Chinese medicine or Western medicine, contain ingredients such as organophosphorus, calcium, or potassium, mung beans will combine with these ingredients to form precipitates, thereby breaking down the medicinal effect and affecting treatment.

2. How should mung beans usually be stored?

We know that mung beans are prone to becoming infested with insects. The mung beans bought can be stored in plastic jars or plastic bottles, such as larger beverage bottles. Mung beans that cannot be finished this summer can also be stored this way and can be kept until the summer of the following year. They can be put in a large cola bottle, and it is even better to store them in the refrigerator.

Other methods:

1. Put the mung beans bought into the freezer for a week and then take them out, and they will not become infested with insects.

2. Put the mung beans in the sun to dry for a while, then put a few slices of garlic in them.

3. Wrap some Sichuan peppercorns in gauze and put them into the mung beans.