Mung beans ( Mungo)

ARTHRITIS AND THE MYTH OF THE MUNG BEAN (MUNGO, MOONG)

The oft conjured story about mungo causing arthritis has actually no written  literature, scientific or otherwise, on review. 

By Edward Era Barbacena

It must be something local to the Philippines.  This I yet have to hear as a significant educational gap of common (by this I mean, lay) knowledge of arthritis in other Asian countries where mung beans or moong or mungo is abundant. As one who specializes in arthritis and rheumatic diseases, it can be frustrating to hear as a matter of daily, per  patient encounter, the attribution of any joint malady to eating mungo. While it is unusual or even weird to pity food, I must admit that I have grown to “pity” the mung bean over my 35 years of practice.

One of the favorite local filipino dishes is sauted mung beans ( ginisang mungo). Many believe that consuming alot of mung beans can cause different sorts of arthritis.

The oft conjured story about mungo causing arthritis has actually no written  literature, scientific or otherwise, on review. It would therefore qualify as an old wives tale. And as old wives tales go, this belief is construed as fact and assured of its factual status and longevity as it is passed from one generation to the next. In recent years, the personal emotions that arise each time I hear the mungo “accused” of causing this painful neck or the bad knee, have grown from pity to “protective” and even defensive type of annoyance. I’d immediately counter the accusation, with a tirade of scientific facts about how the mungo is an innocent bystander during some food indiscretions that actually cause NOT just any arthritis, but only gout!  It can be surmised that since gout is the most severe of the arthritides, it is easily the one arthritis that needs a reason for being.  And the mungo, it is

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Gout is a common and complex form of arthritis that can affect anyone. It's characterized by sudden, severe attacks of pain, swelling, redness and tenderness in one or more joints, most often in the big toe.

Gout is a severely disabling, painful, episodic and recurrent arthritis that affect males in their big toe, ankles and knees individually at first but in years, all together. Its episodic nature might well be timed after a generous meal of mungo served by the wife, and unbeknown to her, the man may have had a good serving of innards with alcohol earlier. The ensuing gouty attack therefore gets tagged on the mungo meal.

Whatever the source of this tale is not in Google. Philippine folklore publications carry various forms of  treatment for arthritis consisting of what is now considered as alternative or complementary medicine, others describe the “pasma” which supposedly does not have a known medical equivalent and nothing much else. Patient sites on mung beans, on the other hand, describe its medicinal value including as treatment for arthritis.  When actual patients are asked, their one universal answer is, they have been told that mung beans cause arthritis. Specifically who told them? Blank.

Going back to gout, we continue to find some internet sites listing beans as a possible cause of arthritis due to its purine content. In fact, one does NOT find the mungo listed under high purine containing food. It actually is known to contain just moderate  amounts of purine.

Foodstuff causing arthritis therefore need to be qualified to details of what food and which (of the more than one hundred types) arthritis, can be truly causally linked:

Gout can be caused by diet high in red meat (beef, pork, etc), small fishes and shell fishes, anchovy and innards, alcoholic drinks like beer and wine, and fructose based beverages like the soda and commercial juice drinks. Dehydration and physical stress are other common and immediate causes of acute attacks of gout and not just any arthritis.

Meanwhile, we urge all to leave alone the legend that the mungo or mung beans cause arthritis  and instead, eat it for it high nutritional value and perhaps even to treat arthritis if any.