Important health reasons to avoid aquafaba also known as chickpea “bean water” as a plant-based egg substitute as harms include inflammation of the gut and elevated miscarriage risk.
Over the last few years, aquafaba has become all the rage within some alternative cooking circles.
In essence, it is the bean water from canned or cooked chickpeas (garbanzo beans). Sometimes other types of legumes like fava (faba) beans are included in the definition as well.
Technically speaking, aquafaba is similar to rice water, which has many health benefits. However, while the water from cooking rice is safe to consume, bean water is best avoided.
What is Aquafaba and How is it Used?
The sticky, thickened water from cooking beans has the curious ability to whip up just like egg whites, stiff peaks and all! Thus, it makes an excellent egg replacer for those allergic to eggs or those espousing a vegan diet.
Chickpea water, in particular, is useful for whipping up egg-free desserts from brownies to homemade ice cream. One reader of this blog commented that it works extremely well as nondairy milk for making homebrewed lattes.
Social media groups with thousands of fans regularly share a seemingly endless array of ideas, recipes and other suggestions for using it.
But, should you really be consuming this slimy, gel-like liquid? Is it safe?
And more importantly, did traditional cultures use it?
Certainly, given their frugality and “waste not, want not” mentality, if cooked bean water was healthy to use, a clear pattern of historical use would prove it, right?
The History of Aquafaba
Aquafaba as food for humanity is very new on the scene. A French tenor named Joël Roessel first considered its use as a foodstuff in 2014 while investigating the possibilities of vegetable-based foams.
Later, a pair of French thrill-seekers independently posted a viral video showing how to make a dessert out of whipped chickpea foam.
Goose Wohlt, a vegan software engineer living in Indiana, perfected aquafaba in 2015. He first used chickpea cooking water to make a meringue to take to Passover seder.
After vegan blogs picked up the idea, it migrated to social media forums, and a movement was quickly born.
The name aquafaba is a blend word combining “aqua”, meaning water, and “faba” for faba beans. Goose Wohlt originally coined the term with a community of social media fans adopting it. (1)
Not to be outdone, aquafaba quickly gained the attention of the food industry.
In 2015, the New York condiment company Sir Kensington’s debuted Fabanaise, the first aquafaba-based vegan mayo. $8.5 million in investment funding quickly followed.
The product is highly profitable because the cooked chickpea water in the mayo is sourced as a waste product from an upstate hummus company. (2)
More industrial food uses are sure to follow.
Scientific Research
Suffice it to say that the science of what constitutes aquafaba is not at all clear at the present time. This is not surprising given that aquafaba didn’t exist as a culinary ingredient prior to 2014.
Only the peer-reviewed publication, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) that publishes experimental methods in video format, uses the term as of this writing with research published in February 2018. (3)
Dr. Martin Reaney of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada led a team that found that the foam from canned chickpea aquafaba varies in composition depending on the commercial source.
Processing methods are the determining factor such as soaking, cooking and/or dehydration. The pH, temperature, pressure, and duration of these methods affect its makeup as well.
Analysis using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy reveals that the foam consists mainly of polysaccharides, sucrose, and heat soluble protein fractions including defensin, histone, and superoxide dismutase among others. NMR also detected the storage proteins provicillin and leguminin.
Findings presented at the 2nd International Conference on Food Chemistry & Nutrition found that aquafaba quality from commercially canned chickpeas is inconsistent. (4)
Most alarmingly, Dr. Reaney’s research demonstrated the presence of saponins in aquafaba responsible for its soap-like foaming effect. This confirmed a hunch to that effect prior to testing.
These chemicals are dangerous to human health, contributing to the development of leaky gut and potentially a miscarriage risk. More on this with citations below.
Reasons to Avoid Aquafaba
If you’ve been intrigued by the buzz about aquafaba and the chorus of some alternative voices who advocate using it, I would strongly advise you to hold back your enthusiasm and avoid jumping on the bandwagon at least for the time being.
Here are 6 reasons to stay cautious and not be an early adopter of this trend.
Canned Chickpea Water Dangers
Canned bean or chickpea water (liquid from any canned food for that matter!) is almost certainly laced with a chemical cocktail of hormone-disrupting substances.
The industrialized packaging process involves pouring boiling hot food into cans lined with a thin layer of plastic containing the industrial chemical BPA. This triggers the leaching of the chemicals into the water, and to a lesser extent, the food too.
The companies that profess to use BPA-free cans typically use another chemical called BPS, which is just as bad. The risks to your endocrine system from these chemicals are simply not worth it. Stay away!
If you absolutely must use chickpea water, then at least use the water from chickpeas packaged in glass jars.
Bean Water Not a Traditional Food
Evidence that suggests that traditional societies consumed legume cooking water is hard to find. Ancestral diet advocate Dr. Chris Masterjohn recommends drinking the water from soaking legumes for the folate content. (5)
However, I could not find a solid ancestral reason for doing that either.
This piece of wisdom on the matter from the well-respected cookbook Nourishing Traditions:
Traditional societies whose cuisines are based on legumes prepare them with great care. Beans are soaked for long periods before they are cooked. The soaking water is poured off, the beans are rinsed and in the case of chickpeas the skins picked off. As the legumes cook, all foam that rises to the top of the cooking water is carefully skimmed off. Sometimes water is replaced midway during the cooking process. Such care in preparation ensures that legumes will be thoroughly digestible, and all the nutrients they provide well assimilated because such careful preparation neutralizes phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors and breaks down difficult to digest sugars.
It seems that if consuming the soaking or cooking water for beans and other legumes was a good idea, at least one culture would have done it. They certainly wouldn’t have replaced the cooking water halfway through cooking if they thought it was valuable to use as food!
Obviously, carefully soaking and then replacing the cooking water indicates they were attempting to get rid of something. That something is anti-nutrients that harm health.
Old cookbooks published prior to the Green Revolution which kicked off around 1930-40 do not advocate using legume cooking water other than suggesting very small amounts for mashing beans.
Until some solid anthropological evidence of this practice comes to light, it seems prudent to abstain from this recently popularized method.
File aquafaba under “fad” until further notice.
Aquafaba = Ultragassy
So you’ve decided that avoiding canned bean water because of the chemical risks from the packaging is a good idea. What about making aquafaba at home instead?
I’m sorry to tell you that homemade aquafaba is a bad idea too.
The reason is the large, complex sugars called oligosaccharides that are present in abundance in legumes. Humans, in fact, all mammals cannot digest them because they do not produce the enzyme alpha-galactosidase, which is necessary to break them down.
No worries, as methane-producing microbes in the colon are happy to break them down for you instead. This makes for potentially embarrassing, smelly encounters with others. Gas, bloating and diarrhea are also common when these substances are eaten. (6)
Soaking and thoroughly cooking legumes have traditionally been the solution to eliminate this problem. However, if you consume the soaking and/or cooking water where the oligosaccharides go when they leave the chickpea, lentil or bean, then the gas prevention strategy is lost.
Keep a bottle of Beano on hand in that case as it contains the necessary enzyme and will beat the methane microbes to the bean the punch.
Better yet, skip the aquafaba meringues at the office party.
Dangers of Saponins
As confirmed by research, the presence of saponins is responsible for the egg white-like foaming effect from whipping chickpea water.
Saponins are a class of chemicals present in legumes in significant amounts. (7, 8, 9)
Agave also contains a lot.
Saponins are a toxic steroid derivative that disrupts red blood cells. They should be avoided during pregnancy as consumption can induce a miscarriage by stimulating uterine blood flow. They also contribute to the development of leaky gut over time by damaging the gut wall.
Does eating aquafaba once or twice damage the gut? Probably not. But using it as your primary egg replacement for months or years is a risky move!
Saponins are thermally sensitive and dissolve in water when soaked or blanched causing a detergent-like effect. Notice the picture of the cooking beans on my stove below.
Do you want to eat that saponin-loaded foam?
Really?? Maybe try whipping the detergent water from washing your clothes for that next batch of egg-free macaroons too.
Just kidding.
Note that the quotation from Nourishing Traditions above states that legume-eating traditional cultures carefully skimmed off this foam. Obviously, they knew that this stuff was dangerous since their preparation methods incorporated this step.
Beware of propaganda suggesting that consumption of saponins increases hydration and cellular uptake of water or is otherwise beneficial to health. Eating them has no benefit in the diet whatsoever.
Avoiding them is one reason we cook beans and shouldn’t consume the cooking water even if it whips up nice and pretty for making desserts.
Faba Bean Dangers
Naming aquafaba after the faba bean, in particular, was clearly a Freudian slip! Faba beans are the most dangerous legume of all that can cause serious health problems in a large swath of the world’s population.
Faba beans, more popularly known as fava beans, are the most dangerous legume in the world, accounting for a serious and potentially life-threatening reaction that 400 million people worldwide are susceptible to.
Consumption can trigger a hemolytic anemia episode known as Favism after the fava (faba) bean. This is due to the most common human enzyme deficiency-related response in the world called Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency.
It typically occurs in people of Mediterranean, Southeast Asian, or African descent. It is particularly dangerous in children.
If you are genetically susceptible to the dangers of faba beans, I sure wouldn’t be going and consuming aquafaba made from them either!
Egg Nutrition “Whips” Aquafaba
Ultimately, the biggest reason to avoid aquafaba is that it doesn’t come close to replacing the nutrition of eggs.
Comparing anti-nutrient loaded, detergent-like bean water that few if anyone in history consumed to Nature’s perfect food prized by numerous indigenous societies for its unmatched blend of healthy fats and complete protein is just plain foolish!
My advice to aquafaba fans? Eat your eggs my friends and get them from your own backyard hens, a neighbor, or farmer’s market if you are rightfully concerned about the horrid abuse of birds used to produce commercial eggs.
If you are allergic to chicken eggs, try duck eggs or goose eggs which some people tolerate much better.
If you truly need an egg substitute, try this chia seed egg replacement. You won’t get gas from it or damage your intestinal health like with bean water!
I’m going to go collect the gorgeous eggs from my backyard henhouse now!
*The Healthy Home Economist receives no revenue from the meat, egg or dairy industry. Nor does she own stock or have any financial interest in companies supporting these industries.
(1) Origins of Aquafaba
(2) Aquafaba: An Explanation and History
(3) Composition and Properties of Aquafaba: Water Recovered from Commercially Canned Chickpeas
(4) Factors affecting functional properties of aquafaba, water recovered from commercially canned chickpeas
(5) How to Get Enough Folate
(6) Putting the Polish on Those Humble Beans
(7) How Do Grains, Legumes and Dairy Cause a Leaky Gut? Part 2: Saponins and Protease Inhibitors
(8) Saponins of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa): Effects of processing on their abundance in quinoa products and their biological effects on intestinal mucosal tissue
(9) Saponins as cytotoxic agents: a review
Why we don’t just stick to the simple way of growing and eating food is beyond me. We gave to stay away from any and all “modern “ foods. Because so many are using almond based products we now need more land and more bees to pollinate the almond trees. We are killing millions of bees as a result. If we don’t have bees to pollinate certain plants, those plants die, the animals who eat those plants die and right on up the food chain.
Leaky gut isn’t real. Diets low in saturated fat have been proven to be the healthiest for humans using scientific research for 100 years. Archaeology and biology side with evidence that humans originated as thriving on high carb diets of 100g fiber daily. Everything presented here may be “researched,” but it is still biased bunk based on “traditions” instead of what has been proven to work best for the human body. You can prove whatever you want if you present a thesis the right way. Line up 100 studies that prove any of your findings and there might actually be a reason to believe it. Interpreting data is difficult but when you’re dealing with a handful of outcomes versus dozens the concluding presented most frequently is the one that should be regarded as the closest to the truth.
It is very real … it is the root cause of autoimmunity issues, which in particular plagues the large vegan community here in Florida where I live. These folks (sadly, many only “get it” that their diet is deficient when they start to experience very serious dental issues such as their teeth starting to fall out) have been seen eating raw grassfed butter with a spoon right out of the container they are so starved for nutrients and the healthy fats that keep the intestinal wall strong and autoimmune issues at bay.
More on this by a well respected MD: http://amzn.to/2HAwL13
Hey there, I’d have to say that vegans are all about non cruelty or exploitation of animals. Everyone would prefer to be healthier. Eating foods derived from assuming animals WANT to give us literally off of their backs makes me more dubious than using the soaking water from plants. I wonder how “dangerous” foods consumed with I’ll feeling and intent correspond within the body?
Great, well you don’t have to eat it! The rest of us will enjoy this excellent ingredient. I’m allergic to eggs and I buy chickpeas in glass jars. I don’t think anyone expects to get much nutrition from the stuff, but it’s a good binder in baking. Mostly the water from freshly cooked legumes doesn’t work well as aquafaba, you really need the water that has taken on enough of the proteins from the beans, and that means canned or jarred. Traditionally, this wouldn’t have been available, so it’s no surprise it wasn’t discovered.
I use aquafaba for my baking which means I eat it occasionally and I disagree with the warnings in this article, mostly because they don’t make sense. Just because something hasn’t been traditionally used in cooking doesn’t mean it isn’t healthy, there are many foods that we eat eat now that we didn’t use to and our diets in general are so much more varied than they ever have been. As far as the water being unhealthy because of canning chemicals, well then so are the beans themselves which are sitting in the same chemicals or the soup or the sauce or whatever else we eat that comes from a can. The one thing that caused me pause was the comments about saponins, so I did some research. Turns out saponins exist in about 400 foods that humans eat, traditional foods like spinach and they are not dangerous and are actually good for lowering blood cholesterol. liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/109662004322984734 As far as the risk of miscarriage, the only thing I could find was an article that said very large doses were required to produce heamolysis so like most things in life moderation is best.
Look at it this way … if something like bean water could have been used for food traditionally, it would have been IF it was actually a good idea. The fact that it wasn’t and that no culture bothered with it is very ominous given their frugality and practice of wasting nothing. I know that vegans are all about lowering cholesterol, but that is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, the more cholesterol is lowered, the higher cancer risk rises. Women with the highest cholesterol live the longest in fact. There are many benefits to natural cholesterol in foods like eggs. Of course, oxidized cholesterol in processed foods should be avoided. Most people lump natural and oxidized cholesterol in the same bucket and this is a mistake with broad and negative implications for health.
I warned in the article of misleading propaganda that says saponins are healthy and lowering cholesterol is one of these pseudo benefits. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/health-risks-low-cholesterol/
Also note the research article I linked to about saponins triggering leaky gut and autoimmunity issues … something that plagues the vegan community in particular. Unfortunately, a frequent problem is that people get emotionally bought into their dietary choices and will only realize the mistakes when health has been damaged.
to the first person who commented: rebecca,READ the article she’s written. sarah has done her homework and is providing great resources to continue that research. i hate it so much when people dismiss someones work out of hand. i didn’t read anywhere in this well crafted and compelling article ANYTHING fear mongering. the idea that folks would create a whole new genre of food out of BEAN WATER sounds insane to me personally,but i am of the mind that the best lesson learned is the one you learn on your own. through experience. there is NOTHING worse than poorly cooked beans. i cannot even begin to imagine what the bean water of unsoaked,badly cooked beans would do to my precious health. thank you for the article sarah.
Why are they dangerous during pregnancy? Are you saying they cause miscarriage?
The article explains this.
When modern farming took over, which I understand, why would that affect the cooking methods? Say beans stopped being grown organically. Why would that women would start cooking them differently? Or potatoes stopped being grown organically, same. Even over time, why would anyone change the how they cooked basic things, like beans or rice? Why would it be forgotten in a few years?
After processed foods came on the scene post WWII, people began to gradually forgot the steps and preparation methods traditionally taken before legumes and grains, nuts and seeds were eaten. There are many articles on this site that explain these methods, which by and large, few people do anymore. Hence the huge rise in digestive problems from improperly prepared food. How many young people today know how to cook anything except to heat it up in a microwave? More people are figuring out how wise these methods are and that you eat less, get more nutrition from your food, and prevent digestive issues when the ancestral practices are followed.
Well Sara, as usual you make sense to me! Besides, I am a lazy vegan!
Tonight I cooked beans in my Instant Pot. We removed a cup of the water and set it aside. We then seasoned the beans and ate them. We used the reserved bean water in a recipe that called for aquafaba. I don’t see anything dangerous about this.
The water you cooked the beans in contains considerable amounts of anti-nutrients that damage the lining of the gut contributing to the development of leaky gut over time. Scientific references about this are linked in the article above. These anti-nutrients are also dangerous to consume if pregnant. Hope that summarizes the problem well enough.