The Story Behind Bean Day, January 6
It’s not what you think
You probably remember the playground song that goes:
Beans, beans, the musical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot,
The more you toot, the better you feel,
So let’s have beans for every meal!
Sometime after the American Heart Association was established in 1924 and began recommending a diet of reduced cholesterol and increased legumes, a second verse appeared:
Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart,
The more you eat, the more you fart,
The more you fart, the better you feel,
So let’s have beans for every meal!
While there is scientific evidence behind the AHA’s modern healthy diet, I couldn’t find any historical reference tying the second verse to the AHA.
However, in the far distant past, beans could be very bad for your health. Here’s how:
Pythagoras lived from 570–497 BCE, and he founded a secret religious-mathematical cult, which believed that everything could be reduced to numbers, setting the foundation for a lot of modern science. They were an ascetic cult, and Pythagoras forbid his members from eating beans because they…
