As hungry Italians at the Broad Bean Festival lined up for broad beans and pecorino, broad beans and porchetta, or just bags full of fresh broad beans, the manager of an adjacent garden spoke of the bean with dread.
“We look for them and we tear them up”, said Francesco Urso, 72, pointing to a sign that read “Fava bean planting prohibited.” The pod packed with hollow oval beans can be delicious, great for the earth and a prized spring refreshment, but it was a matter of life and death. “Favism,” said Urso.
While many Romans celebrate the bean season and the arrival of spring with picnics filled with beans, those who suffer from favism live in fear.
For those with the blood disorder — which Lucio Luzzatto, a leading scientist in the field, explains spread throughout the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East because it offered some protection against malaria — exposure to lima beans can cause acute hemolytic anemia; induce jaundice; enlarge the spleen; and lead to heart failure and death.
Throughout Rome, warning signs that read “Fresh broad beans are served here” are attached to restaurants and markets. The near-death experiences of celebrities afflicted with favism go viral.
Many towns have banned the cultivation of broad beans hundreds of meters from schools or the homes of the vulnerable, as some favism sufferers say that a simple whiff of broad bean pollen can trigger an attack.
Sardinia, the island in southern Italy where around 10 percent of the population suffers from Favism, has developed a few remedies over the years. “To cure me when I was little, they laid me down and covered me up to my neck in ox dung,” said Beatrice Brundu, 78, from the town of Perdasdefogu. “And she healed me. Now, they only give me pills”.
But despite the prevalence of the disease, broad beans are unavoidable throughout Italy, particularly in Rome in May.
At the Roman restaurant Checchino, which has a beware of broad beans sign on the door, owner Francesco Mariani, 62, said the idea of not offering broad beans in mayo was ridiculous.
“Don’t go to a Roman restaurant,” he said of people with allergies. “Go get some sushi.”
The hundreds of Romans at the bean festival at Castel di Leva knew what they wanted. Green mountains of discarded fava pods were piled on the tables.
There was not a single warning sign. “It’s a Bean Festival,” said Francesco Galli, 47, the organizer of the event. “If you are allergic, perhaps it is better that you do not come.”
Jason Horowitz
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6718050, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-17 22:40:08
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